Miriam O’Callaghan leading the charge on tackling obesity

Miriam O’Callaghan admits she is not always the “perfect mother” when it comes to buying healthy food for her family.

Ms O’Callaghan, a mother of eight, was speaking at the launch a cross-party Oireachtas group that wants a greater effort made to tackle childhood obesity and food poverty.

Her nine-year-old son, Ms O’Callaghan said, had pestered her in a supermarket this week to buy food that was unhealthy but cheap.

“Everywhere we went, he was asking, ‘Can I have that, mum?’ These unhealthy food products; they are so commonplace. We are all just so used to them.”

The RTÉ presenter admitted to sometimes giving in to her children when they demand unhealthy food.

“I am not the perfect mother. It’s clear that solutions to childhood obesity must address the fact that treat foods and drinks are increasingly being consumed as if they were a staple part of children’s diets.”

Ms O’Callaghan recalled visiting a mother with two young children in a deprived area of north London 20 years ago. She was working on a story about cutbacks for lone parents with the BBC’s Newsnight programme. The two children in the flat were not very active and she thought they were undernourished.

The children were much loved but their mother did not have the money to give them the food they needed to grow into healthy children.

The girl was a little overweight, not because she was being nutritionally fed but for the fact the mother was only giving her food the family could afford.

Ms O’Callaghan said she often thought twice about buying fruit and vegetables because they cost a lot of money. “So if you are a parent in this country and a mother trying to survive and trying to give your children, in your mind, the best food you can give them to fill them up, you are going to opt for the cheaper options.”

She added that it was important that childhood obesity and poverty were above party politics. “We talk about cherishing all of our children in Ireland equally. Well, this is an example of how we can work on it.”