Objective: To investigate New Zealand children's understandings of "health". Design: Secondary analysis of student responses to a task called "Being Healthy" in New Zealand's National Education Monitoring Project. Setting: Year 4 (8-9 year-old) and Year 8 (12-13 year-old) students who took part in New Zealand's National Education Monitoring for Health and Physical Education in 2002. Method: Coding of student responses using NVivo qualitative analysis package. Results: Students reiterated messages widely promulgated in popular and professional mediums. Students predominantly conceived of health as a corporeal matter, citing eating, exercise and hygiene practices as the most important health promoting behaviours. Conclusion: Students could usefully be encouraged to adopt socially critical understandings of what health might entail and broader, more holistic conceptualizations of health beyond matters of the "body" alone.