New research is challenging health professionals to rethink the way they talk about food with Māori, finding kai is about far more than calories, nutrients and disease prevention — it is deeply connected to culture, whakapapa, whānau, whenua and wellbeing.
The research, led by Massey University’s Dr Nikki Renall, explores the meaning food holds for Māori and how those relationships could help shape more culturally responsive healthcare and nutrition advice.
The findings come as Māori health and nutrition remain firmly in the public conversation, including through the work of public health academic and advocate Professor Lisa Te Morenga, whose expertise has focused on nutrition, Māori health and health equity.
At the heart of the new research is a straightforward message: telling someone what they should or should not eat without understanding what kai means within their life can overlook much of what actually influences food choices.
Kai carries culture and connection
For Māori, kai can connect people with whānau, whenua, identity, memory and community.
Food can be an expression of manaakitanga, a way of caring for visitors, maintaining relationships and passing knowledge between generations.
Sharing kai can strengthen social connections and reinforce belonging.
Researchers found enduring Māori values continue to shape relationships with food, including sharing, manaakitanga, avoiding waste and caring for people and place.
Those principles have persisted despite enormous changes to Māori food systems over generations.
Colonisation and the loss of whenua disrupted traditional sources of food and the ability of communities to maintain customary practices.
Urbanisation moved generations of Māori away from ancestral lands and traditional food-gathering environments, while environmental degradation has affected access to waterways, fisheries, native species and mahinga kai.
Modern food systems have transformed what is available, where it comes from and how much it costs.
Yet the research suggests the values surrounding kai have remained remarkably resilient.
Colonisation changed what was on the table
Understanding Māori nutrition today therefore requires understanding history.
The transformation of Māori foodways did not occur simply because individuals made different dietary choices.
Land loss, colonisation, urbanisation and environmental change reshaped the conditions in which those choices were made.
When communities lose access to whenua, they can also lose access to gardens, gathering areas and traditional food resources.
When waterways and coastal environments deteriorate, customary sources of kai can become scarce or unsafe.
When whānau relocate to urban centres, knowledge and practices previously connected to particular places can become more difficult to maintain.
Those changes demonstrate why researchers believe discussions about nutrition cannot always be separated from social, cultural and environmental circumstances.
Healthcare can focus too narrowly on nutrients
Conventional nutrition and healthcare approaches often concentrate on measurable outcomes.
Health professionals may consider calories, sugar, salt, fat, protein, vitamins, body weight or the relationship between diet and conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Those measures remain important.
But the research argues they represent only part of the picture.
A nutritionally ideal recommendation may achieve little if it ignores affordability, whānau circumstances, cultural significance, access to food and the role particular kai plays in a person’s identity and relationships.
That is where a more person-centred approach could make a difference.
Instead of beginning only with what needs to disappear from someone’s diet, health professionals could first understand what food represents within that person’s world.
Better questions could produce better healthcare
Dr Renall’s research suggests recognising an individual’s relationship with kai could allow health professionals to provide advice that is both clinically useful and realistic.
That does not mean abandoning nutritional science.
It means placing nutritional science within the circumstances of the person receiving the advice.
A recommendation that respects cultural practices, whānau responsibilities and the emotional significance of food may be easier to maintain than one imposed without that context.
That could be particularly important when dietary changes are required to manage long-term conditions.
Sustainable health improvements often depend on changes people can maintain for years rather than restrictive interventions followed for several weeks.
Understanding kai could therefore help clinicians and patients identify compromises and alternatives that protect health without unnecessarily disconnecting people from important cultural and social practices.
Manaakitanga has health value too
The findings also encourage a broader understanding of what wellbeing means.
A meal can provide nutrients, but sharing it can also provide connection, belonging and manaakitanga.
Growing or gathering food can involve physical activity while strengthening relationships with whenua.
Passing knowledge about kai between kaumātua, parents, rangatahi and tamariki can reinforce identity and whakapapa.
Avoiding waste can reflect both economic practicality and values around respecting resources.
Those dimensions can disappear when food is reduced to a nutritional label.
For Māori health, the research suggests a more holistic model can recognise that physical wellbeing exists alongside cultural, emotional, social and environmental wellbeing.
From telling people what to eat to understanding why
The implications reach beyond Māori health.
Modern healthcare increasingly recognises that simply providing people with information does not automatically change behaviour.
People make decisions within families, communities, cultures, budgets and environments.
For Māori, understanding those influences also means recognising the historical forces that transformed access to traditional foods and whenua.
The research therefore presents health professionals with a different starting point.
Before asking what somebody eats, it may be valuable to ask what kai means to them.
That conversation could reveal the whānau relationships, cultural practices, economic realities and personal experiences that determine whether health advice will actually work.
For Māori, kai has never been simply fuel for the body.
It can carry whakapapa, memory, manaakitanga, identity and connection to whenua.
Recognising that complexity could help move nutrition services away from telling Māori what is wrong with their diets and towards working alongside whānau to develop changes that are healthy, culturally meaningful, achievable and built to last.
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