Consultation on the Children and Young People’s Dietary Guidelines (3–17 years)

Overview

This consultation has been reopened to allow stakeholders further opportunity to contribute to the development process. The new closing date is Friday 26 September 2025.

The Ministry of Health (the Ministry) is seeking your feedback on updated draft dietary recommendations for children and young people aged 3 to 17 years of age.

In January 2025, the Ministry commenced a review of its dietary guidelines for New Zealand children and young people. Food and nutrition advice for children and young people was last fully updated in 2012.

Background

The Ministry has produced population level dietary advice for New Zealanders for the last 20 years in the form of the Food and Nutrition Guidelines series and now the Eating and Activity Guidelines (EAGs) series. The guidelines are written for health practitioners and others who provide advice on nutrition and physical activity to the public. They also provide direction for programmes and policies that promote healthy diets.

Approximately every 10 years, the Ministry updates its advice to reflect the current evidence base. In 2015, the Ministry published Eating and Activity Guideline for New Zealand Adults. In 2020, the Eating and Activity Guidelines were updated to include advice for pregnant and breastfeeding women and in 2021, Healthy Eating Guidelines for New Zealand Babies and Toddlers (0-2 years old) were published. Advice for children and young people now requires updating.

Process for this update

The Ministry has established a Children and Young People’s Dietary Guidelines Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to provide advice on updating the guidelines. The TAG is made up of 12 researchers and practitioners with a research interest and expertise in child and adolescent nutrition.

The Ministry has worked with the TAG to update the current guideline recommendations by considering recent evidence reviews for dietary guidelines in other countries and the international evidence for relevant topics that were generalisable and applicable in the New Zealand context. This included the latest systematic literature reviews on specific foods or dietary patterns and their relationship with the health and wellbeing of children and young people, and research on the dietary habits of New Zealand children and young people.

Read the consultation draft

• Children and Young People’s Dietary Guidelines (3–17 years): Consultation document with draft recommendations (PDF, 446 KB)
• Children and Young People’s Dietary Guidelines (3–17 years): Consultation document with draft recommendations (Word, 837 KB)

About the consultation

This survey asks you to consider the draft dietary recommendations for children and young people and indicate whether you support, partially support or disagree with each recommendation. There are five key recommendations, plus supplementary recommendations which add further detail. You do not need to comment on every recommendation; please skip topics not in your area of expertise.

Within this document, we have supplied a brief explanation of the key evidence that has informed each recommendation. The Ministry’s dietary indicators for New Zealand children have also informed our recommendations and will be included in the final guidelines.

Practical interpretations of the recommendations for public health messaging are not part of this consultation. Please note that these guidelines do not update current advice on food serving size, physical activity and sleep recommendations but that the final guidelines will include this advice.

This consultation will inform further development of the draft recommendations and the evidence included in the final guidelines.

We expect that the survey will take approximately 20–30 minutes.