EFFORTS TO tackle childhood obesity are dominated by a "blame somebody else" approach, a public health expert has claimed.
Prof Patrick Wall, associate professor of UCD School of Public Health and Population Science, said Ireland needs to develop an "enabling society" which would tackle all the many reasons for childhood obesity.
An estimated 300,000 children in the Republic are obese.This epidemic has been blamed on bad diet and more sedentary lifestyles. Prof Wall said the problem would continue, even if fizzy drinks were banned and every fast-food outlet was closed.
He blamed sedentary lifestyles as at least as big a factor, especially as the average seven- to 10-year-old spends three hours in front of a TV and/or computer screen every night.
"Obesity is a simple disease to understand. It's the balance of calories in and calories out, but the causes are multiple."
Prof Wall said an enabling society would ensure that junk food advertisements targeting children would be banned, schools would have walk-ways and cycle lanes, sport would be for all and the no-run policies in schools would be ended.
"If your bathroom tap is leaking into the kitchen, you can spend forever bailing out the kitchen, but it will never stop," he said.
"We don't have a health system, we have a sickness system and turning off the tap means promoting healthy lifestyles, not trying to deal with the problem when somebody turns sick."
Such an enabling culture will involve behavioural changes in people and public awareness campaigns in themselves can never be enough, he explained.
He said drink-driving and smoking legislation showed that the law can change people's behaviour and what is deemed to be socially acceptable.
Prof Wall was one of the speakers at the launch of the Voice of Young People report yesterday in Dublin. It is part of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company's Way2Go initiative and involved 12 groups of children, from primary and secondary schools. It found that schoolchildren are more preoccupied with the social effects of being overweight, rather than any health side effects.
To them, a healthy diet is one that means they will not gain weight - not one that delivers the right balance of nutrients and food groups, according to research which was carried out nationally among children between the ages of 10 and 14.
Children are more preoccupied with the effect of junk food on their appearance (weight gain, spots and bad teeth) than what poor nutrition will do for their overall health.
They associated being healthy with being physically fit and active, playing sports and engaging in outdoor activities.
The report found a high level of awareness among young people about the difference between healthy and unhealthy food, but given the option between a nutritious lunch option and meals with high-sugar content, they tended towards the unhealthier option.
It also found a high level of prejudice in children as young as four against overweight people and little sympathy for such people, the perception being that overweight people are lazy, spending all their time watching TV, and are therefore responsible for their condition.
Prof Wall said that in the Way2Go research, for the first time, young people were asked to formulate both what the problem of obesity is and how they should deal with it.
Meanwhile, a study by VHI Healthcare found that obesity levels in expectant mothers are on the increase and are posing serious problems for maternity hospitals. The article found that the level of obesity in women during their antenatal visits has almost doubled, from 9.4 per cent to 18.4 per cent, in the last decade. This had led to an increase in complications during pregnancies.
