Obesity is mainly caused by poverty, an international food conference in Dublin was told today.
Lord Christopher Haskins, a food advisor to the British government, told delegates at the conference in University College Dublin that "poor people had a more fatalistic attitude to life and consequently drank more, smoked more and ate more unhealthy food".
"Most people understand what is good and bad for you, it is not an ignorance issue, it is a despair issue".
"If you could solve the problem of poverty, you would solve 80 per cent of diet problems", Lord Haskins said.
He said a fat tax would be an "awful method of tackling obesity", saying it was impossible to determine what food was healthy and what was not.
Lord Christopher Haskins, a food advisor to the British government
A fat tax would be "an awful method" of tackling obesity, a leading food expert said today.
"There's natural sugar in fruit, are we going to tax fruit?," he said. "No food is unhealthy as long as you eat it in moderate levels."
Mr Haskins grew up on a farm in Wicklow before becoming the head of the Northern Foods Company in Britain which is now worth €1.3 billion.
He said in the affluent world food had never been safer, despite the fears of the middle class. But he admitted that food science had been tainted by its recent failures.
"Thirty years ago scientists were heroes, they've made the blunder of feeding vegetarian animals with meat and they have allowed themselves to be influenced too much by politicians. We've got to rebuild public confidence in science."
He said that there needed to be a rational debate on genetically modified (GM) foods, which had been unfairly dismissed as "Frankenstein" food.
"GM sugar could lead to a huge reduction in the use of pesticides and herbicides and if you look at the average banana, it is sprayed 40 times because of fungicidal disease. Think of a GM banana without the need for pesticides. It would also be very good for people who have to spray the bananas, often without any protection."
He predicted that in 20 years the major food producers would be replaced by innovative small food businesses who were not afraid to take risks. He said supermarkets would become large warehouses for these businesses to franchise their products.
The International Food Conference is hosting a range of experts over the next two days to identify new technologies in food production and new methods of restoring consumer confidence in food.