Simon | Greenlane
“I’ve got a young family. I’m a public health physician. I’m an epidemiologist. I look at diseases in populations.
I’m passionate about diet. I think we need a sugar tax. I think New Zealand is drowning in sugar at the moment, we need a tax to discourage people from eating sugar, and I think it’s contributing to rotten teeth, diabetes, gout and cardiovascular disease; a whole lot of preventable things. I’ve been strongly involved in lobbying the Government over this issue. I’m very optimistic with the change of Government, and a few stories in the newspaper in the last few days that the Government’s now going to take the issue of sugar very seriously. That’s something that consumes me on a sort of professional level.
On a related thing; starch and carbohydrate intake I think and dietary guidelines in this country, and actually globally, need to change. I think we’ve demonised fat for far too long. I think it’s sent us down a path to increasing obesity and diabetes, and lots more medication, and we can do a whole lot better if we lose our fear of fat, and eat good food that’s not in a packet, that doesn’t contain high levels of sugar and starch. I think those are really important things to me.
Another important thing to me is looking after people on the street. It really troubles me when I go down Queen St on the weekend see a whole lot of people begging with their KFC bucket out or something like that. I think we as a society need to look after people at the bottom of the heap, a whole lot better than we do.
One thing I need is good friends, from a personal perspective that’s what I think is most important to me. When I went to Sydney to live for six months the thing that I missed the most was good friends, a bicycle group that I was involved with on a Sunday morning. They’re just mates who get together and have a natter over a bit of cycling and some coffee, that was probably the one thing that I really missed the most. It’s not so much that I think I need them right here and now; it’s just that I think every human being has a desire to be understood by other people to share their issues. I think community’s a really slippery concept these days.
A lot of life is kind of in these sort of little areas, kind of compartmentalised as the sort of work life, and then there’s community. I’m involved with a church, which is a community of sorts. There’s academic communities that I’m a part of. There’s sort of social media, I guess I sort of see it not so much as a sort of local community.
If you ask me about the local community in Greenlane, I would kind of feel a bit blah, because I’m not particularly involved in that. Maybe a few neighbours that I know well, to me they’re a community, but most of my social time is actually not in that immediate sort of geographic community. It’s with groups.
I think look after each other. Don’t fear fat, and lose that sugary crap that goes with Christmas. Get rid of it.”
