The Government should place more emphasis on promoting physical activity rather than trying to tackle obesity in order to improve the health of the population, a leading international expert in public health has said.
Adrian Bauman, a professor with the school of public health at the University of Sydney, Australia, and author of three books and more than 250 peer-reviewed research papers on the area, said encouraging children and young adults to be active was the best way to prevent heart disease and other related illnesses from developing in later life.
"Studies on the burden of disease and injury have shown that the leading cause of disease is tobacco, followed by physical inactivity. Obesity is much further down the list," said Prof Bauman. "However, the Irish Government, like the governments in most other developed countries, focuses on obesity. That's where all the money is going but it's not where the main risk is," he said.
"We've got our priorities wrong . . . We need to reframe our thinking and start looking at promoting physical activity."
Prof Bauman was speaking at a conference in Dublin yesterday, aimed at developing a policy to promote physical activity among young people and organised by the National Heart Alliance, an independent non-governmental organisation involved in the fight against heart disease.
According to Prof Bauman, children and young people have increasingly less leisure time, which is contributing to the fact that they are becoming more sedentary. "Kids aren't walking or cycling to school anymore. They have less time to build on play as well. That might be because both parents work and they're taking lots of after-school classes and not exercising," he said.
Data collected from 32 European countries in the Health Behaviours of School-Aged Children survey in 2001 and 2002 showed Irish children and teenagers are among the most active. The study showed that 59 per cent of 10- to 11-year-olds, 53 per cent of 12- to 14-years-olds and 35 per cent of 15- to 17-years-olds exercised four or more times a week.
"Ireland may be doing well by international standards but even if 50 per cent of the population is sufficiently active, that leaves another 50 per cent who aren't," said Prof Bauman. "No child has ever been disadvantaged by being physically active. All the parents who are sending their kids to after-school classes are not really helping them," he said.
"Physical activity can boost academic performance but school curriculums are constantly being reworked to make room for sedentary things and squeezing out PE. Those things are not always education-enhancing," he said.
"When you have a risk factor as prevalent as physical inactivity - being sedentary is three times as prevalent as obesity - something needs to be done. The single most important thing we can do to improve our own health is get active. There's also a correlation with mental health - adolescents who exercise are less likely to suffer from mental health problems. We need to reframe our attitudes and make being physically active a cultural norm."
The National Heart Alliance, which comprises about 30 organisations, is working on a policy and recommendations to be presented to Government on the area of promoting physical activity among young people.