In recent years, New Zealand has had a slowed decline - and possible reversal - of heart disease incidence. Could a growing dominance of UPF in our diets and food system be contributing to this change in trend?

This three-year research fellowship explores: current snapshot of NZ household UPF purchasing, Trade flows (imports, exports) of UPF over time, temporal association between UPF imports and obesity prevalence, Market structure and concentration of the UPF industry, Network analysis of key UPF industry stakeholders, Policy analysis of key regulatory levers to curb UPF production, trade and consumption.

Ultra-Processed Food screening tools provide a rapid non-resource-intensive option to estimate populations’ dietary share of UPF. In the absence of a recent national nutrition survey, this is our best bet to fill the gaps in what we know about New Zealanders’ UPF consumption.

Originally developed and validated in Brazil, UPF screeners must be adapted and validated before being applied in different country contexts. We do this by using household purchasing data to create our own NZ version. We then validate the NZ UPF Screener by running it alongside a more robust and intensive 24-hour dietary recall survey, to check that the results of both tools are aligned.

How much unhealthy advertising are young people seeing on social media? While the harms of unhealthy commodity advertising are well known, the digital age has revolutionized brand marketing. Social media advertising is especially challenging to monitor due to its individually targeted nature. A novel Ad Observatory mobile app, developed in Australia, enables researchers to capture and examine ad content and targeting directly from users’ personal feeds, without capturing any personal or non-ad content.

In collaboration with my colleagues in Marketing and Computer Science, I am working with the team in Australia to make improvements to the app, and to use it with young New Zealanders to see how exposed they are to unhealthy advertising, and what kind of strategies are being used to target them. Once we have a better idea of what we are up against, we will be able to provide better advice on how to design policy to protect young people online.

This work involves collating evidence on the healthiness of Auckland’s food environments (e.g. food marketing exposure, food retail outlet density), reviewing the existing relevant policy landscape, scoping the policies in place in other jurisdictions globally, and developing tailored policy recommendations for implementation in Auckland Council.

How healthy are New Zealand’s food environments? What policies are in place to improve them? What progress has the New Zealand Government made over time?

This work involves regularly benchmarking the New Zealand Government’s food environment policies against international best practice. We conduct this study every election year, to take stock of progress to date (or failure/stagnation), and to set a roadmap for what needs to happen in the next electoral cycle.