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Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare says a wide range of tools and approaches will be needed to tackle the diabetes epidemic.
Mr Henare has come under fire from National for suggesting a sugar tax, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern now ruling out the idea.
But he says the country has a problem, with hospitals struggling to cope with the results of diabetes including kidney failure, amputations and blindness.
Auckland, Northland and Waikato have the highest growth rates of diabetes, especially among Māori, Pacific and increasingly Indian people.
"We’ve got a problem with diabetes in this country and it's easy to point the finger at sugar but it is actually about lifestyle and the way our people choose to live and what they do in their time and how they eat and all those things are issues that we need to use the tools at hand to make sure that we change that," he says.
Peeni Henare says food labelling and controls on marketing of sugary products are also tools that can be used.
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