Letters: Milk, red meat healthy for us too with plenty of minerals and K2

Vegetables and fruit are good, but you need dairy products and red meat as well, says G.R. Scown.

A journalist suggested GST should be lifted off "healthy" foods, fruit and vegetables, to control diabetes and obesity.

Who decided they were the healthy foods? There are other, healthier foods.

Milk, cream, butter, cheese and red meat are very healthy foods with plenty of minerals.

When they were demonised, obesity and type 2 diabetes raged. Without these at a high level in your diet, you have to resort to carbs, which leave you perpetually hungry, fat and protein insatiate.

Another thing is that K2 vitamin tells proteins what to do with their load. Fat also makes proteins more useful.

Growing grass uses photosynthesis, which produces K1 vitamin. Ruminant animals turn K1 into K2, so are very important to a healthy diet.

Vegetables and fruit are good, but don't do the complete job, so we should not be rating them over dairy products and red meat.

G.R. SCOWN
Whanganui

Wellbeing bonds

As Simon Wilson commented (Chronicle, February 5), the PM's speech at Waitangi was "big on rhetoric". Not that I needed this observation to read with sceptical eyes, "We are here to acknowledge the past, and challenge the present".

Okay, let's do exactly that. But in reverse. On January 13, the New Zealand Gazette published a Notice of Approval in accordance with the Crown Entities Act (2004), incidentally passed under a Labour-led government. Permission had been given to Kainga Ora (formerly KiwiBuild) to borrow from sources other than the NZ Treasury, including dealing in derivatives (financial fairy dust).

The two Labour Ministers responsible are Grant Robertson, Minister of Finance, and Dr Megan Woods, Minister of Housing. The amount approved was $7,100,000,000 along with permission to borrow more as required.

Readers are sure to raise their eyebrows when they learn the name of the securities being offered on the debt markets: "Wellbeing bonds"! Certainly the well-being of the speculators is assured, long-term public debt yielding steady returns in decades to come as our mokopuna struggle to pay the interest.

All this is in stark contrast to sentiments about acknowledging our past. Especially coming from a politician who wants this nation's history taught in schools while refusing, along with her colleagues, to honour their first prime minister's brave decision to fund State Housing from the newly nationalised Reserve Bank.

With minuscule interest and with modest rents soon flowing back into government accounts, the houses were soon paid for without long-term debt. But, as history has proved, M.J. Savage was short on rhetoric, preferring real action.

To quote the great 20th-century Quaker economist, Kenneth Boulding: "What has happened is possible". Just need more Kiwis to agree.

HEATHER MARION SMITH
Gonville

Charging shortfall

It is all very well John Milnes telling New Zealand to buy an electric car and save the planet, but the charging infrastructure needs improving.

In Norway, where the electric-vehicle revolution has taken off, half the cars on the roads are EVs. The airport in the capital, Oslo, has more than 700 type-2 charging plugs for electric cars and a charge is free. In England all the BP petrol stations are being fitted with 100KW-DC fast-charging plugs.

New Zealand charging stations have a maximum charging rate of 50KW-DC and most can handle only one car at a time.

I have a Jaguar I-Pace that is 100KW-DC charging capable — which, if available, would make my trip between Whanganui and Auckland much shorter in time.

If someone else is charging their car, that's another 40 minutes to wait.

The Ford Motor Company in America, about eight weeks ago, released a new SUV car named Mustang. It has the Mustang pony emblem on the bonnet. It is fully electric.

The internal combustion engine is going the same way as the dinosaur, the horse and cart and the coal-fired steam engine. The petrolheads need to understand this.

RICHARD BOULD
Westmere

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