SOME FOOD products which are specifically targeted at children comprise such junk that we would “not feed them to animals in captivity”, according to one expert.
Prof Ivan Perry of UCC warned that obesity presents societal challenges akin to global warming and said it would be naive to assume that the issue could be resolved through tackling individual behaviour alone.
In a lecture “Obesity: A Modern Plague” at Sligo General Hospital’s 10th annual research conference, Prof Perry said obesity was an epidemic in the literal sense and demanded a response from all sections of society in the same way as climate change does.
Earlier this year, Prof Perry and his colleagues at the Department of Epidemiology Public Health at UCC published research which underlined the catastrophic scale of obesity among Irish children.
They reported that while Irish children were now taller than they were in 1948, their weight had soared in the same period, with the most dramatic increases seen in 14-year-old boys – up from 37kg (five-and-a-half stone) in 1948 to 60.9kg (nine-and-a-half stone) in 2002.
Stressing that it would take a major public policy goal to tackle obesity, Prof Perry told the weekend conference that the food sector was a very powerful lobby “not far off the tobacco sector”.
He said a huge proportion of foodstuffs on the supermarket shelves were high in fat, sugar and salt and “not meeting any need in terms of nutrition”. Foods specifically targeted at children were so lacking in nutritional value that we would not feed them to animals, he added.
Prof Perry identified soft drinks as a particular problem, saying they had replaced water in the American diet, but that a tax on soft drinks was now being mooted there.
The obesity rate among adults in six US states is now estimated at more than 30 per cent, while in only one state, Colorado, it is less than 20 per cent. In Ireland, it is now estimated that 25 per cent of the adult population is obese.
Prof Perry said there was a parallel epidemic of obesity among children and he stressed that there were huge implications, given that the obesity is associated with premature death as well as conditions such as type 2 diabetes.
While obesity or “corpulence” had been identified as a health issue more than 200 years ago, it had come to be regarded as a public health issue only 15 or 20 years ago.
While some determinants such as individual behaviour had been overemphasised, it was just as important to think about agriculture and food production, he said.
“Food production is very important. Those of us who drink skimmed milk forget that the skim has been taken off and will get to us at some stage, in our soup or our muffins or God knows where,” he said.
Prof Perry said it was significant that the cost of fruit and vegetables was rising just as junk food was coming down and was often the most affordable option for consumers.
