I've been thinking a lot about kids, lately, and what we as a society owe them.
This train of thought started at the FIZZ (Fighting Sugar in Soft Drinks) symposium, when I listened to paediatric dentist Dr Katie Bach tell of kids appearing in her clinic nursing serious dental abscesses; in constant pain from teeth so decayed they have to be removed under general anaesthetic. Bach described her worst day: the time she removed a total of 61 teeth from six children.
We owe our kids a food environment where nutritionally devoid, sugary drinks and foods aren't causing so much damage.
I felt an overwhelming mix of sadness, anger and shame, too, reading the recently released report from the Child Poverty Action Group on food insecurity. Titled "Aotearoa, the land of the long wide bare cupboard", the report paints a bleak picture of life in this country – where we pride ourselves on the bounty and quality of our food – for kids unlucky enough to be born into families in poverty, where good wholesome food on the table daily is far from certain. Right now, around one in five children lives with severe to moderate food insecurity.