The push to ban soft drinks from school tuck shops is gaining momentum after the announcement they will be phased out of United States schools.
Health advocates are hoping New Zealand soft drink makers will follow their US counterparts' lead and start phasing out sugary drinks from secondary schools.
The soft drink giants will pull sugary drinks from United States schools over the next four years and our government is looking for the companies here to do even better.
Some New Zealand schools such as Tawa College have already taken the problem into their own hands. The college students are no longer washing their food down with sugary fizzy drinks after their school board banned them a year ago.
Tawa College principal Murray Lucas says the decision to ban soft drinks was easy.
"We don't think it helps the obesity issue and also doesn't help in settling student behaviour, so I guess they were the driving forces behind the changes we made."
But hundreds of secondary schools still sell soft drinks, as it is currently a decision for individual schools.
The US soft drinks plans are being hailed by former US president Bill Clinton, who was himself an overweight child.
"This is a huge deal. This is a big blow in the fight against obesity."
Green Party MP Sue Kedgley says tackling obesity is a high priority issue in New Zealand too
"I think we should be moving on it very quickly, I mean if the industry can act in America why can't that same industry act swiftly here?"
Soft drinks will be gone from all US schools by 2010, and the New Zealand government is now keen to beat that timeline here.
Soft drink makers voluntarily stopped supplying fizzy drinks to primary schools in New Zealand two years ago. Health minister Pete Hodgson says he them to extend that embargo to secondary schools voluntarily.
