Madam — I wish to congratulate Anne Marie Kavanagh for her brave thesis on the health and nutrition claims of 24 food and drink items packaged as healthy choices for children's school lunches (HEALTHplus, October 7th). She has concluded that regular consumption of these so-called healthy lunchbox products must be a factor in our rising levels of obesity and childhood diabetes.
May I suggest that another factor is the lack of breastfeeding of our infants and young children; it is well documented that formula feeding increases the risk of obesity and childhood diabetes, as well as childhood cancers, acute respiratory disease, asthma, allergies, cardiovascular disease, etc.
The vast majority (94 per cent) of the mothers in Anne Marie's survey said that health was the most important motivating factor when shopping for their children's school lunches; what a pity health doesn't motivate this high a percentage of mothers when it comes to providing nutrition for newborn infants, growing toddlers and young children! If, as Sylvia Thomson puts it, food products aimed at children rarely live up to their nutritional claims, should parents not be even more wary of the nutritional claims of formula, which is so often used instead of the vastly superior product - breastmilk? - Yours, etc,
HELENA BYRNE,
Enniscorthy,
Co Wexford.