One recent news story made me feel like I was sitting in the audience of a good old Jerry Springer show. It was the tale of a mother who would buy meals from McDonalds and after a quick whizz through her blender, she would then feed the mixture to her baby.
But she wasn’t from Jerry's home town. She was living right here, in Dublin.
And, to me, that sounds like the antithesis of a happy meal.
The sorry tale comes to us courtesy of Safefood Ireland who recently launched a campaign to tackle childhood obesity.
Their shocking research shows that one in four Irish children are now obese. This is one huge ticking time bomb as studies show that the dietary habits formed in childhood will last a lifetime. Furthermore, paediatricians warn that obesity in children can be difficult to reverse and will track into adulthood.
So how did we end up here?
There are certainly a number of factors that culminated in this epidemic. Parental choice, lack of education, a time-poor lifestyle and the proliferation of advertising all play a part. Can you believe that, on average, Irish children see five thousand fast food ads a year?
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Both our society and government have some difficult decisions to make. Restrictions on advertising may work to a degree but this issue goes deep into the fabric of our fast paced, fad diet culture.
It’s no wonder our tummies are unhappy.
Rennie have also been busy and have just completed their “Gut Feeling” survey. We learn from their investigations that 81 % of Irish adults speed eat their main meal in under 20 minutes. Another interesting finding was that women are twice as likely as men to confess to being a “snack guzzler” (28% of the ladies as opposed to 14% of the guys).
The questions of how and why we eat are just as important as that of what we eat. Do we need to take a more holistic approach to the Irish diet?
Because with those stats on children’s health, I’m not lovin’ it.
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Are you surprised by the Safefood results? Will you ever look at your blender in the same way again? Have you ever thought about the how and the why of your, and your family’s, eating patterns?
