Duncan Casey: Time to tackle our obesity crisis

It is no secret Ireland is thundering towards the title of “heaviest in Europe”. Obesity levels are spiralling out of control and have been for some time, with one quarter of our adults now in the category.

Our children are not faring any better — a quarter are overweight or obese. It is predicted we will have the second highest obesity rates on the continent by 2025.

It is widely accepted the problem is an urgent one. Very few will disagree with the idea something needs to be done. The thing is, I’m 25 years old. I can recall hearing a discussion about this in school at 15 years of age. Rather than improvements, we have seen a drastic escalation of the problem in the last decade.