Opinion: Cheap, energy-dense foods driving obesity epidemic

A photograph of my 1966 Leaving Cert class shows 17 young women, aged 16 to 18 years, all of normal weight. The majority are on the thin side. Chests and waists are about 32 inches and 26 inches, respectively.

Nowadays, because of obesity, children are reaching adult sizes earlier than before, and children as young as eight or nine have the same chest and waist sizes as my Leaving Cert class.

Clothes for 11-year-olds and under are zero-rated for VAT, up to and including 32-inch chests and 26-inch waists. VAT of 23 per cent is applied to larger sizes. The Irish School Wear Association wants this tax removed, saying obesity is the problem. The VAT applies from a certain size to avoid adults benefiting from a zero tax rate.

Whatever the Department of Finance decides to do in the next budget, there is a bigger – excuse the pun – problem, which is that children are getting bigger and fatter.

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has made obesity prevention one of his priorities. In a statement to the Seanad in June, he acknowledged that overweight and obesity are serious personal and public health issues: "There is no other disease or medical condition that affects so many people in Ireland."

Varadkar outlined several initiatives over the next few months, including a new National Physical Activity Plan and an Obesity Policy and Action Plan 2015-2025. The Minister’s Healthy Workplace initiative, whereby all public sector workplaces will have to develop and implement policies to ensure that staff stay healthy, is a good one.

Weighing in

Under the new GP scheme, children will be weighed at ages two and five. Varadkar, noting Ireland’s success in relation to smoking and traffic accidents, said: “We need to treat overweight and obesity with the same degree of importance as we did these.”

The question is, will all these initiatives be enough to reverse the obesity trend?

The short answer is no. There are just too many cheap, energy-dense, nutrient- poor foods on the market.

Food energy supply

A new report published in the June bulletin of the

World Health Organization

, shows that increased food energy supply is a major driver of the worldwide obesity epidemic.

Researchers collected data on body mass index (BMI) and food energy supply from 24 high-income, 27 middle-income and 18 low-income countries, including Ireland and most of the EU. Changes in food energy supply were compared with changes in body weight over time for each country.

Researchers concluded that “increases in food energy supply are sufficient to explain increases in population body weight, especially in high-income countries”.

Strangely, in Ireland and Italy the increase in the amount of food available was insufficient to explain the observed increases in weight. The Irish and Italians are fatter than they ought to be, given the increase in food supply. The most likely explanation for this is the recent recession.

The correlation between changes in food energy supply and the prevalence of overweight and obesity was highly significant for high-income countries. The growing and excessive food supply is contributing to higher energy intake as well as to food waste.

Food waste

In the US, food waste has increased by 50 per cent since 1974. Each American throws away 1,386 calories of food every day, enough to feed one person. In Ireland, five billion calories too many (1,245 per person) are on offer to consumers each day. This food must be either thrown away or sold to customers using clever marketing techniques.

Most people succumb to food marketing and buy far more energy-dense, nutrient- poor food than is good for them. At the same time, some families experience food poverty or are undernourished.

The new Food Wise 2025 strategy, launched recently by the Department of Agriculture, will increase the prevalence of overweight and obese Irish people. The strategy, if successful, will lead to a greatly increased food energy supply. (See iti.ms/1M7F0Og)Marketing is a big part of this strategy using "high-level consumer insight", which means subjecting the population to hard-sell tactics. Unless steps are taken now, Irish people will become fatter than ever.

The Government must respond aggressively to marketing tactics and develop policies “to improve the healthiness of food systems and environments”, as stated in the WHO bulletin. These include restricting food marketing, taxing energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods, and developing health-promoting agriculture policies.

Poor nutrition is the default position in the insane and perversely structured Irish food system. Eating healthily is just too difficult.

drjackyjones@gmail.com

Dr Jacky Jones is a former HSE regional manager of health promotion and a member of the Health Ireland Council.