UCC study: Four gaps found as Ireland struggles in fight against obesity

The new study calls for a reform of Ireland's food environment, including more education and changes to marketing legislation, to help tackle obesity. File picture

Ireland is falling behind in the fight against obesity, a new University College Cork (UCC) report has found.

Findings from the study have led to calls for a reform of Ireland’s food environment, including the introduction of 'no fry zones', enhanced education on food, and changes to food production and marketing.

The first Irish Healthy Food Environment Policy Index (Food-EPI) has highlighted how, when compared to other countries, Ireland performed poorly at rolling out measures to reduce the marketing of unhealthy food to children in the media and online.

The Food-EPI Ireland study is led by Dr Janas Harrington at UCC’s School of Public Health. 

It is the first of its kind to benchmark the Government’s level of support for improving the healthiness of the food we eat.

The report compared Ireland to other countries, including the Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand, and found Ireland lags behind when it comes to marketing unhealthy food to children, the implementation of ‘no fry zones’, the use of policies to support healthy food choices, and providing support for companies to provide healthy eating options to employees.

Ireland also performed badly when it came to the roll-out of evidence-informed labelling and the need for food composition targets for processed foods.

Four major gaps were identified: These included a lack of government action on the introduction of targets for out-of-home meals; a failure to restrict the promotion of unhealthy foods to children on food packaging; no discernible progress in the public sector to provide and promote healthy food choices, and a failure to implement policies that encourage the availability of outlets selling nutritious foods.

However, it found that Ireland rates well in ensuring the public has access to nutritional information.

It also found Ireland has made strides in monitoring overweight and obesity prevalence in the population.

“The government needs to seize an opportunity to improve the diets of the Irish population, prevent obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases by investing in the kind of policies and programmes which have demonstrated success in a number of countries,” Dr Harrington said.

Doing so would improve health and counteract long-term healthcare costs associated with obesity.

There were five priority policy recommendations that arose from the report.

These included introducing nutritional standards for schools, including tuck shops, the establishment of a committee to monitor and evaluate food-related income support programmes for vulnerable groups, and the ring-fencing of tax on unhealthy food to subsidise healthy options for disadvantaged groups.

The introduction of “no fry zone” planning legislation to prohibit the placement of unhealthy food outlets within 400m of primary and secondary schools was also recommended, as well as the implementation of a policy on nutrition standards for food and beverage provision in the public sector.