Fast food nation

THE nightmare scenario facing modern Ireland is clear: unless children stop eating so much junk food and do more exercise, they risk dying before their parents do.

This is no Doomsday scenario dreamt up by scaremongers but a very real prediction from dieticians and medics worried about the health of the nation’s children. So worried, in fact, that they use terms normally reserved for tabloid media — such as crisis and epidemic.

Professional nutritionist Margot Brennan from the Irish Nutrition and Dietetic Institute says: “Certainly we have a huge problem with obesity and being overweight in the population at the moment.

“It’s not unreasonable to say almost half the population is overweight or obese [too overweight].

“While obesity is a problem in its own right, the effect it has on the body overall is an obvious concern.

“If you carry a lot of extra weight you are at increased risk of heart disease, increased blood pressure, diabetes, problems with arteries and bladder problems, while cancers are also linked to it.

“Some authorities are saying we are looking at a population where adults will outlive their children because of obesity [and illnesses related to it].

“It has huge implications if a teenager develops diabetes and complications arise in 20 years’ time when they are in their 30s and 40s as their parents will be in their 60s.”

Obesity means that diseases that were once the preserve of old age are, shockingly, creeping into adolescence when boys and girls should be in their prime.

“In teenagers we are now seeing, for example, more type-two diabetes, which is generally associated with middle-aged people. This is a huge concern because diabetes has many, many risks for health in its own right.

“It’s also possible now to look at the arteries of a nine-year-old child and see changes indicating the start of coronary heart disease,” she says.

Last year, the Government’s National Taskforce on Obesity delivered a damning 132-page report about the nation’s expanding waistline.

After taking a long and hard look at the whys and wherefores of the nation’s obesity levels, the report bleakly noted: “This may be the first generation where children will have lower life expectancy than their parents, leaving a huge social gap in family relationships and caring for older family members.”

Despite work done by public health reformers since the 19th century to increase life expectancy, our children face the prospect of living shorter lives than those in the 20th century.

All this in a country that has never been so rich or educated — and where 2,000 of us are dying prematurely every year from obesity.

Based on work carried out in Britain, the task force reckons 327,000 children in the Republic and the North are overweight or obese, with this number increasing by 10,750 per year.

“Given present levels of obesity among the young it is clear in simple mathematical terms that the numbers dying much earlier than they should will increase dramatically over the next 50 years unless current trends can be changed.

“It is not difficult to see where the numbers are going,” says the report.

So where are we going wrong?

Surprisingly, it is what we eat and not how much in calories (or energy) we consume that seems to be one of the keys.

Consider this comparison of what we eat today with what our forefathers ate.

In 1948 the average person consumed 3,110 calories a day — a third more than the 2,106 we consume on average.

On calories alone, the 1948 diet seems a recipe for obesity as men are told not to consume more than 2,500 a day on average while women are limited to 2,000.

People should have been piling on the pounds but they were not.

An analysis of the food eaten in 1948 reveals why.

Then, Irishmen and women got almost three-fifths (58%) of their energy requirements from carbohydrates like potatoes, oats and bread, under a third (29%) from sources of fat like dairy produce, and the rest from protein like meat.

They got it in the right way round. That’s the way the body likes it.

Today we get too little energy from carbohydrates (50%), too much energy from fat (33%) and too much from protein (18%).

Although we are consuming fewer calories than our predecessors, we are eating the wrong kinds of calories and foods: too little bread, potatoes and cereal; too much fat from meat or dairy produce and too much protein from meat.

The way the body handles this new mix of food — compared to the kinds of foods eaten 60 years ago — means people put on weight.

The report says: “High levels of obesity and overweight were not observed in 1948.

“This can be partly explained by the greater levels of energy expenditure at that time owing to the fact that more people were in manual labour and motorised transport was not widely used.”

Our forebears consumed more calories but, crucially, the exercise they did in the field, on the building site and in the factory burned it off.

The blend of foods in their high- calorie diet meant they did not put on excess weight.

Further evidence of where we are going wrong can be found by looking more closely at the kinds of food we eat — particularly what nutritionists call energy-dense foods like confectionery, cakes and biscuits. Junk food in other words.

The top three foods that make up our energy intake are meat (16%), bread (14%) and potatoes (11%). At number four, providing 9% of our daily energy is junk like cakes and biscuits. Add the 7% from confectionery and that figure comes to 16%, putting junk food on a par with meat in providing energy levels — way ahead of breakfast cereal and vegetables.

If we look at where our fat comes from then figures are even more revealing: meats are the biggest provider, accounting for 23%, spreads like margarine give us 17%, while cakes, biscuits and sweets are third at 14% — ahead of bread, milk and cheese.

Of the carbohydrates we consume (for energy), a quarter comes from bread but 20% comes from sweets, cakes and biscuits and 17% from potatoes.

Incredibly for a nation whose history is so closely bound with the potato, we are eating more junk than spuds.

Adults and children are getting increasing amounts of energy, fat and carbohydrates from junk food, which unlike fresh produce is poor in nutrients like iron, calcium and protein.

But does this matter if you, say, as a teenager need lots of energy for growth? Well, yes.

As dietician Margot Brennan, herself a mother-of-four, says: “Studies show that children are getting 20% of their daily intake [for calories] from poor-nutrition foods that offer little other than calories, fat and sugar but no important nutrients.

“Children have high requirements for growth and need calcium, iron and protein and if 20% of their calories are coming from foods without these nutrients, then they’re missing out on something.”

According to Ms Brennan, mum and dad need to get back to basics in the kitchen, cook a proper meal in line with good nutrition guidelines and then sit down as a family to eat.

But today’s Irish families are “cash-rich and time-poor” and they are not sitting down together to eat nutritious home-cooked meals as much as they used to.

When parents do cook, increasingly it’s the kind of convenience foods they should eat rarely. More people are eating outside the home (takeaways, restaurants and snacks) because they have the money to do so but they lack the time to feed themselves properly.

By choosing convenience foods, parents are surrendering the degree of control they have over the family diet.

Children and adults are becoming fat and obese because families are letting food manufacturers, restaurants and supermarkets do the thinking.

As the task force said: “Increasing demands on time due, for example, to work commitments and commuting distances has led to an increasing demand for pre-prepared food that is readily available in the home, or food prepared outside the home.

“In Ireland this is noticeable in the proliferation of deli or fast food counters in petrol station forecourts and convenience supermarkets.

“While fruit, vegetables and other healthier options are also available, the desire for ready-made foods or foods prepared outside the home means that they are often overlooked in favour of more energy-dense foods.”

In the US and Canada nutritionists looking at their continent’s overwhelming obesity problem decided to look again at their healthy eating guidelines. They wanted to see if the information could be revised to take account of the way we live and eat today — and what they found was little short of startling.

The healthy eating message was, perversely, contributing to obesity.

Nutritionist Dr Mary Flynn of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland says: “What they found was that the healthy-eating message was leading to over-consumption of calories.

“In an attempt to get the minerals and vitamins they need people were over-consuming in terms of calories, which was contributing to obesity.”

People are eating too many of the things that are both good and bad for them, making their overall diet poor.

Dr Flynn, the Government authority’s specialist public health nutritionist, says labelling on food packaging, for instance, leads to consumer confusion instead of education over their diet.

What is meant by portion size? How much of this can I eat a day? What about the children? How often should I eat foods like this? Am I getting enough vitamins and minerals or just too much sugar, salt and fat?

The FSAI is following the North American model closely as the Government is looking to revise Ireland’s healthy eating guidelines, while labelling is being looked at on a European level.

She says: “In the USA and Canada, emerging evidence has come out to show that we need more calcium and iron. In Canada milk is one of the things they are pushing but they are telling people to hold back on the cheese and have it occasionally.”

The task force wants parents to start having a greater say over their children’s diets so better consumer information is seen as crucial if parents are to make the right choices.

The FSAI, though, is starting the battle against obesity in the cradle and wants to see more mothers breastfeeding their children.

If the next generation grow into healthier eaters, Ireland might avoid the Doomsday obesity scenario — and children might yet outlive their parents.