Unhealthy living ‘costing State €1.8bn’

LACK of exercise and unhealthy eating habits are costing the taxpayer up to €1.8 billion annually, a health conference was warned yesterday.

Speaking at a Nutrition and Health Foundation (NHF) conference, Dr Muireann Cullen said while it was easy to call on the Government to intervene, in reality it was up to people to eat and exercise sensibly.

The mammoth cost to the taxpayer, she said, was based on Irish research showing the numbers of people not getting the recommended levels of exercise, and on British research citing the financial impact of such unhealthy practices.

“The UK chief medical officer stated that physical inactivity was costing the UK €8.9 billion, and excluding the contribution of physical inactivity to obesity and overweight. This means that in Ireland, with similar levels of physical inactivity and based on a 2009 health budget of just over €16.3bn, this equates to a cost of €1.8bn per year.”

Research here shows 59% of Irish adults and 75% of nine-year-olds do not get the levels of exercise recommended by the Department of Health and Children.

The World Health Organisation has identified physical inactivity as a leading cause of death in developed countries, responsible for an estimated 23% of coronary heart disease, 17% of colon cancer, 15% of diabetes, 12-13% of strokes and 11% of breast cancer.

Meanwhile another speaker at the conference, Professor Arne Astrup, head of the Department of Human Nutrition from the University of Copenhagen, speaking at the NHF conference said people with a high intake of dairy products are less likely to develop obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

“While this is observed to be the case, there are not yet plausible explanations to explain this connection. Nevertheless, the consumption of dairy calcium appears to have effects that go beyond those of reducing spontaneous food intake,” she said.

The NHF was established in January 2005 and is a multi-stakeholder partnership, involving industry, government, scientists, health professionals and other relevant stakeholders.