Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Which govt department to believe?

According to the Ministry of Health I must be doing fruit buying for three or four households which makes me extremely skeptical about a report which says the average household spent $5-90 a week on fruit in 2003/04 (presented as though it is current).

According to Statistics New Zealand the average household spending on fruit (first column) in 2003/04 was almost $10. Call it $9-50. Only 61 percent more than the Ministry of Health figure.


Of course the MOH has a vested interest in painting alarming pictures about poor nutrition and obesity. Keeps them in work.

5 comments:

Lindsay Mitchell said...

The point of the figures is to promote hysteria over obesity thereby softening up the public for more restrictions, regulations and taxes.

Unknown said...

And so the remaining $100 of $142 is spent on?

Cos if its all vegetables (as opposed to "fruit") then it's not so bad is it?
One would have to comment on the fact that only 1/3 of the attributed household spending is accounted for...

But I would think we must be heavily skewing those figures with around $10-15 pw of an $80 budget going towards fruit...

Anonymous said...

I found another story today

http://www.times-age.co.nz/localnews/storydisplay.cfm?storyid=3706770&thesection=localnews&thesubsection=&thesecondsubsection=

I bet those that can't afford an apple a day can 'afford' cigarettes!

Swimming said...

IN 2003/4 we werent even spending 90.00 a week at the supermarket.

Anonymous said...

Judging by the comments here and elsewhere, for those statistics to be true, there must be a lot of households that do not buy fruit.