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The world's foremost expert on obesity is calling for taxes on our fruit and vegetables to be removed and instead slapped on high fat, sugary foods.
Phillip James is the chairman of the International Obesity Taskforce and the London-based professor says if we don't act fast, deaths from Type 2 diabetes will spiral out of control.
"You have an enormous problem, a catastrophe in relation to diabetes, emerging over this last five years," he says.
James is in New Zealand to take a look at an initiative by East Coast's Ngati Porou iwi to combat the Maori epidemic of Type 2 diabetes.
Dubbed Ngati and Healthy, the community programme combines nutrition, education, health checks and exercise and has already picked up hundreds of new pre-diabetic cases.
"Ten per cent of our population have diabetes and 3% of those ones were new diabetics who were found," says Ngati Porou's Dr David Tipene-Leach.
James is complimentary about the initiative, saying that it has had enormous benefits.
"What they're doing right is to get the community involved and to realise that it's not simply getting everybody to run around the block and do a bit more exercise, that they've got to change eating patterns," says James.
However, James adds that there is one area that needs more attention.
"What hasn't happened yet is that they've not involved the men enough because they're out at work and they haven't got with it yet."
Direct government intervention is one way in which James believes the situation can be improved beyond the community initiatives. He says that removing taxes on fresh fruit and vegetables will help to instil good habits from a young age.
"If children are not brought up and trained to eat the right foods then they'll never eat the right foods," he says.
With this approach James believes three out four lives lost to diabetes could be saved.
