Neve grew up in a small, rural town in the Waikato called Ngāhinapōuri. As a child she was always very curious, trying to understand how things worked and why things happened. It is no surprise then that Neve is now doing research as part of the First Foods NZ study.
First Foods NZ Study
First Foods NZ is an observational cross-sectional study that follows 625 babies aged 7-9 months from the Auckland and Dunedin area. The objective of the study is to explore what babies are eating once they move from an exclusively milk diet to solid food.
Neve is particularly interested in the method of introducing solid foods and how that might influence whether babies are getting enough of certain nutrients:
"I'm really excited about this work. I think everyone wants to know the best way to feed their baby, but at the moment, there really isn't much evidence to inform the policies and the practices we recommend to parents and whānau. So that's why this research is important and also really relevant."
What will make a difference?
A background as a competitive sports player first sparked Neve's interest in nutrition. She initially wanted to study sports nutrition because she was interested in the impact of food on her performance. However, Neve's undergraduate course opened her eyes to the impact food and nutrition could have beyond the sports field, and to human welfare more broadly.
Neve's intuitive need to make sense of things, coupled with an altruistic desire to discover the factors that will help improve the health of people and communities, has led her into research.
Always keen for a new challenge
When she is not busy with her PhD studies, Neve loves getting outdoors and being active. She enjoys hockey and hiking, and has recently taken up golf.
Neve really likes learning new things and one of her projects during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown was teaching herself how to solve the Rubik's cube!
Neve McLean
