diet-related disease<\/a> and improve children\u2019s health outcomes.<\/p>\n\u201cHaving an impact on children\u2019s health is having an impact on the future of New Zealand,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would really love to see regulations put in place that support children\u2019s health.\u201d<\/p>\n
Urlich said stronger nutritional standards and clearer food labelling were needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe exposure across multiple everyday foods that are marketed for children is what worries me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of these in other countries come with a warning label, but in New Zealand, we don\u2019t have any regulations. And in fact, we do the opposite. There\u2019s a lot of health halos on these products.\u201d<\/p>\n
Urlich said she regularly saw parents confused by marketing terms such as \u201cnatural\u201d, \u201corganic\u201d and \u201cno added sugar\u201d, which did not automatically mean a product was nutritious.<\/p>\n
She encouraged families to look closely at ingredient lists and prioritise foods with iron, protein and healthy fats, especially for babies and young children.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom 6 months, iron becomes non-negotiable for brain development,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) said certain categories of baby food products, including baby formula, infant cereals and ready-to-eat infant foods, already had rules around nutrients and labelling.<\/p>\n
However, the agency said there are currently no minimum nutrition requirements for general commercial foods marketed as suitable for infants and young children.<\/p>\n
FSANZ also said claims such as \u201cno added sugar\u201d must meet specific rules, while terms like \u201cnatural\u201d and \u201corganic\u201d are covered under consumer protection laws.<\/p>\n
The agency said reviews into children\u2019s food regulations and front-of-pack labelling systems, including the Health Star Rating system (HSR), were already underway.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe HSR system is an interpretive front-of-pack labelling system that summarises a food\u2019s overall nutritional profile using a simple star rating,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is intended to be used by consumers in conjunction with other information available on food labels, including the Nutrition Information Panel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ulrich said she had seen the impacts of poor nutrition first-hand through her clinical work, including behavioural struggles, low energy levels, eczema, allergies and dental decay in children.<\/p>\n
The ideal lunchbox, she said, should focus mainly on whole foods like fruit, boiled eggs, carrot sticks, hummus and whole grains.<\/p>\n
![\"Gina]()
Gina Urlich with her youngest daughter, Billie Urlich, 6, preparing healthy lunchboxes for the family. <\/p>\n
Ulrich said healthier eating was not about perfection, but gradual changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of these foods have the perfect combination of sugar, salt and flavours, which makes them very addictive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to put too much pressure on parents that they have to change everything overnight. It\u2019s just slow changes day to day. So, if they\u2019re having a daily yoghurt, how can we switch that to something that doesn\u2019t have the added preservatives and sugar?\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"Gina]()
Gina Urlich having dinner with her family at home. The mother of four continues balancing preventive treatment, business and writing a book about her personal journey. <\/p>\n
Alongside preventive treatment, motherhood and running a growing business, Urlich has also added another project to her routine: writing a book.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s just a bit of a passion project in the background for me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSharing the enormity of what I\u2019ve been through has been quite healing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019m really grateful to be feeling well and healthy and have my energy back again,\u201d she said. \u201cEven…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[74,5837,1561,2534,564,2082,217782,1976,134,117,111,139,5973,69,18661,16860,219968,80],"class_list":["post-429387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-after","tag-battle","tag-bay","tag-cancer","tag-food","tag-for","tag-gina","tag-hawkes","tag-health","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nutritionist","tag-nz","tag-pushes","tag-reform","tag-urlich","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}