New Zealand is a small Pacific Nation that consistently punches above its weight in sport yet increasingly appears on the wrong side of the OECD ledger for health. This first-world country is the first to see the sun – today it not only holds the title for third fattest OECD country, in the past sixty years it’s earned podium places for cot death, asthma, depression, suicide, cancer and heart disease. In Cause and Effect the authors, a retired Southland farmer and an investigative journalist, sift through decades of scientific studies from agriculture, geography, biogeography and medical fields as well as social commentary in an effort to find out what is making New Zealanders sick. Engaging and accessible, this is a book written for every-man, and one that every-man (woman and child) should read – because New Zealand may be first – but this is a problem that’s going global.