“100% Pure” – Public Health Goal Setting

Thursday, August 15th, 2013 | gibju57p | 2 Comments

Associate Professor Nick Wilson, University of Otago, Wellington

 

The “100% Pure” marketing of NZ is marketing hype and an easy target for UK tabloid journalists (see this NZ Herald piece). Nevertheless, there is a case for striving to achieve the “100% level” with certain threats to public health – for example, by achieving Smokefree New Zealand by 2025. Continue reading

Chewing the fat on a saturated fat tax

Tuesday, August 6th, 2013 | gibju57p | 2 Comments

Associate Professor Nick Wilson, University of Otago Wellington

An article we published last week generated plenty of debate [1] (some thoughtful, some distortionary), and in particular debate on the complexities of taxing food. In this blog I argue that, yes, such tax packages have to be well designed (and more research would be helpful), but nevertheless that there is much that could be potentially gained by taxes on saturated fat. Continue reading