THE HIGH prevalence of being overweight and obesity among Irish adults poses a major threat to the health and wellbeing of the population, with significant negative implications for health expenditure over the next decade, according to a report published yesterday.
The latest Slán report on the dietary habits of the Irish population details how we eat too many foods high in fat, sugar and salt, and too little food high in fibre, as well as too few carbohydrates.
The report is a follow-up to the overall findings of the 2007 Slán survey of over 10,000 adults published last April, which revealed that 80 per cent of men and 71 per cent of women over 45 are overweight or obese.
Among adults aged 18 to 44, 41 per cent of men were overweight and 16 per cent obese, while 24 per cent of women were overweight and 17 per cent obese.
The latest report looks at these figures in more detail. It is recommended that 55 per cent of a person's energy is from carbohydrates, 10 to 15 per cent from protein and less than 35 per cent from fat. But more than half of Slán respondents exceeded the fat guidelines.
More than half the adults surveyed consumed less than the recommended 25g per day of fibre, while 71 per cent exceeded the recommended 6g per day intake of salt. Ten per cent did not eat breakfast on the day prior to the survey.
The report states: "A major concern in the Irish diet is the overconsumption of foods high in fats and sugar, such as oils, butter, cakes and biscuits.
On average, Slán 2007 respondents consumed 7.3 daily servings of these types of food which . . . should be used sparingly (ie. less than three daily servings)".
It adds that people who adopt four specific positive lifestyle behaviours like quitting smoking, eating five pieces of fruit or vegetables a day, drinking moderately and being physically active can expect to live 14 years longer than people who ignore them. But just 23 per cent of those surveyed abided by all four of these behaviours.
The report said the recommendations of the 2005 Report of the National Task Force on Obesity need to be made a priority.
Dr Donal O'Shea, who runs an obesity clinic at Dublin's Loughlinstown hospital - which has an almost three-year waiting list - said too few of the taskforce's recommendations had been implemented. Its implementation was to have been led by the Taoiseach but this never happened, he said.