The whitepaper provides municipalities with legal and policy instruments to make the food environment healthier and to explicitly incorporate health into policy. It looks not only at health policy but especially at the connection with spatial planning, permitting, and regulations. The whitepaper shows how the law - including international human rights such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Constitution, the Public Health Act, and the Environmental Planning Act - can be used to protect and promote health through a healthier food environment.
Healthy living environment important
More and more people, including children, live with health risks due to unhealthy lifestyles. Scientific research shows that this development is strongly influenced by the living environment. It concerns the availability of fast food, supermarkets, and advertising in public spaces. In an environment where unhealthy food is abundantly present, it is often difficult to make healthy choices.
Food Law is necessary
Current legislation, including the Environmental Planning Act, offers insufficient possibilities to exclude unhealthy food solely because of its harmful effects on health. The whitepaper shows that municipalities can already do more within existing frameworks, but structural improvement is only possible with national legislation.
Instruments for municipalities
The whitepaper is a publication of the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health and can be read here.