School- and Community-Based Approaches to Healthy Eating and Food Security in Aotearoa New Zealand

To meet the varied dietary needs and preferences of Aotearoa New Zealand’s increasingly multicultural population, our agri-food sector needs to produce a range of affordable food for domestic consumption that meets people’s dietary needs and preferences. However, there are often gaps in our food production and distribution systems, that result in both food poverty in some cases,
and food waste in other cases.

Food provision programmes must be designed to consistently meet the diverse food-related needs of targeted at-risk groups, including addressing the factors that contribute to food poverty. Food poverty is interlinked with wider socio-economic issues, and it is critical that they are holistically addressed in a systematic way.

This report documents reviews of Aotearoa New Zealand’s food production and distribution systems, frameworks and prevalence of food insecurity, “healthy eating” frameworks, and community- and school-based food provision initiatives, in order to increase our understanding about their intent, effectiveness and factors that hinder or aid their successful implementation. This was followed up by case studies with school- and community-based food providers throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, to improve our understanding of how such programmes help to address food insecurity in local communities.