Addicted to junk - It’s time to get tough on junk food

ANYONE who has regularly experienced the splitting headache sparked by chocolate or caffeine cravings will not be surprised by yesterday’s news that junk food is as addictive as heroin, cocaine or smoking.

Anyone who has not fallen into this destructive cycle will find it hard to believe that something as seemingly innocuous as a burger and chips, or even a coffee and chocolate biscuit, can have such a powerful, almost undeniable pull on ordinarily sensible people. Sadly, the evidence is there for us all to see. According to the Health Service Executive one-in-four children and teenagers is overweight or obese. The ratio amongst adults is almost as bad.

Though junk food is not the only contributory factor to obesity and the life-changing ill health it causes, it is a primary factor. It lays the foundation for a lifestyle that can have only one result ... being overweight, sedentary and more than likely unhappy.

That scientists have confirmed that some junk foods are destructively addictive makes the challenge all the greater. It highlights the need for powerful educational initiatives for children and parents. It also points to the need for greater personal responsibility, especially amongst parents who establish what are usually lifelong dietary habits for their children.

With this in mind the HSE has established the Little Steps campaign which encourages parents to make small changes to improve their children’s diet and increase their levels of physical activity. Parents are role models for their children, so if parents make positive changes in eating habits and on exercise, it is likely their children will do the same.

It seems so obvious as to be hardly worth saying but evidence suggests that far too many parents behave as if they have no responsibility for what their children eat.

Yesterday’s report also reminds us of how confusing and unsatisfactory so much food labelling is. After all if you’re not entirely sure of what you’re eating how can you be sure of the consequences?

It may be time too, especially as we mark the sixth anniversary of the introduction of the smoking ban, to consider new measures to curtail this unwelcome challenge to public health.

We have learned by now that big business always puts corporate interests first, so it may be necessary to consider measures far more aggressive than any imagined before. New taxes on junk food and new planning regulations to ban junk food outlets from the immediate vicinity of schools. Banning sweet-vending machines from the workplace would be effective too. After all, gorging on junk food is as destructive as smoking so why ban one and not the other?

One of the ways to confront this issue is to stop before you begin; to develop eating habits that do not resort to junk or high-sugar foods in a regular or excessive way. Surrounded by food options far less healthy than we might like it is very hard to see how this battle can be won by relying on individual willpower alone.

We have all been warned about an epidemic of obesity and its consequences. Yesterday we were warned about one of the primary factors in that epidemic, so it is time something more assertive and aggressive than the current initiatives was done by Government to counteract this threat to our health.