If obesity trends continue, there is ample evidence to suggest that a generation from now, public health services in Ireland and across Europe will be struggling to cope with the consequences. There will be increased incidence of heart disease, stokes, cancer and diabetes and individual families will be afflicted with the personal tragedy of the premature death of loved ones.
This week, the European Commission launched a campaign which it hopes will make EU citizens more conscious of the problem and more willing to do something about it. According to the Commission, 200 million adults in the EU may be overweight or obese (defined as a person who is 20 per cent - 25 per cent for women - over the desired weight for their height). More alarming, the number of schoolchildren who are overweight is increasing across the EU by 400,000 a year.
A recent report based on research among children in Cork and Kerry found that 8 per cent of children between ages five and seven were obese. There is no reason to suppose the figure is not representative of children nationwide. In the UK, the situation is worse: there, some 16 per cent of two-to 15-year-olds are obese. And in Britain, the cost of treating people made ill by being overweight is put at £4 billion a year. In the United States, the latest research, just published by the University of Illinois, suggests that life expectancy in America will be cut by five years over the next 50 years because of obesity.
Some people are seriously overweight because of their bodily make-up. But the scale of the obesity problem spreading through the developed world suggests that diet and sedentary lifestyle are the main causes for what is now an epidemic. Convenience foods, which means processed foods, dominate supermarket shelves. Many processed meat products are a pulverised conglomeration of several different meats and other items to bulk up weight. The food industry - which some will regard as a suspicious partner for the EU Commission's initiative - has for decades been adding sugar and salt to processed food with abandon.
The Cork/Kerry survey found that most schoolchildren there had less than 40 minutes' actual exercise in their physical education lessons. Forty per cent of schools had a so-called no-run policy - a ban on children running in school necessitated by that other curse of the age, hasty recourse to lawyers as the first reaction to almost every mishap. Similar research in Britain shows that almost 70 per cent of children there fail to exercise for the recommended one hour a day and the number of children who walk or cycle to school is just 5 per cent - down from 80 per cent in 1984.
But unlike so many other problems of our time, the solution to the obesity epidemic is substantially in our own hands. Walk more; stop driving children everywhere, ban TV sets in their bedrooms, ration PlayStation and eat fresh, fibre rich food. The EU Commission can't make people healthier - but its encouragement is welcome.