While Kiwis are busy preparing for a day of eating and drinking with loved ones on Monday, the Taxpayers’ Union has been busy preparing a Christmas feast that abides by all of the government’s dietary and health guidelines.  

The Nanny State-Approved Christmas Feast has been prepared following a comprehensive analysis of hundreds of pages of government health advice, and hours of trial and error perfecting the perfect Christmas meal that every Health New Zealand bureaucrat should be happy with. The full report can be read here.   

The Christmas feast contains four courses to enjoy throughout Christmas Day (Breakfast, Lunch, Dessert and evening snacks) and abides by the recommended maximum daily intake of calories, sugar, sodium, protein, carbohydrates and fats for a male aged 31-50 who partakes in light exercise.  

Christmas breakfast consists of two slices of wholegrain toast topped with 40 grams of peanut butter, coupled with your usual morning cappuccino (only this one contains lite milk). 

Christmas lunch consists of a succulent unsalted 60 grams of lamb roast (with the fat removed), cooked with two teaspoons of olive oil. Also fresh from the oven we have an unsalted baked potato, two unsalted baked kumaras, 61 grams of carrot, and 140 grams of cooked broccoli. Top this meal off with a generous 15ml of cheese sauce, 3.4 grams of gravy, and wash it all down with a pint of alcohol-free beer – you deserve it! 

Christmas dessert features many of your Kiwi Christmas staples, with 19 grams of pavlova, half of one piece of fruit cake (25 grams), one strawberry, one banana, one kiwi fruit, one quarter of a scoop of vanilla ice cream (the no added sugar kind), half of a fruit mince pie (27 grams), and to close the show – 8 grams of whipped cream. 

Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, says: 

“Taxpayers are sick of having politicians and bureaucrats telling them how to live their lives. This Christmas, we’re revealing how sad and boring life would be if we took everything the Government said at face value.  

“Our analysis of the health guidelines showed just how strict these complex heath guidelines really are. The worrying thing is that it is often those very guidelines written with advice from lobbyists that are then used by those same lobbyists as justification to call for taxes and restrictions on sugar, salt or whatever the next target of these activists is.  

“If government health overlords had their way, families all across New Zealand would be missing out on the most festive day of the year. Rather than getting into the Christmas spirit, the government has become the Grinch instead.  

“There is a lot more to wellbeing than just people’s physical health. People trade off their health all the time for things they enjoy, and they should be free to do so. Of course, having clear guidance helps people to make informed decisions but what we get from the government is hardly easy to understand.  

“Recommended maximum daily intakes are hidden among hundreds of pages of documents and is often out of step with other countries or the latest health research. 

“In the age of the internet when information is so readily accessible, government health agencies would be better to be linking to reputable sources of health guidelines than spending millions replicating work to come up with their own.  

<<< Read the full report here >>>