Sir, – Further to your recent editorial "Obesity – a burgeoning crisis" (September 10th), on a recent visit to my recently revamped local supermarket, I noticed that a new self-service hot-food counter has been installed, containing a varied array of breaded and battered deep-fried items. One is invited to take a cardboard bucket and "fill to the brim" for the paltry sum of €4.50. As the option to choose and pay for a smaller portion of these culinary delights does not exist, customers are prone to indeed fill their buckets with as much food as possible. The hot-food counter is as popular with uniformed schoolchildren at lunchtime as it is at breakfast time, when crowds gather for the ubiquitous breakfast roll and other equally unhealthy options. If such bad nutritional habits are being formed, and presumably endorsed by parents, at such an early age, then the future is indeed bleak. Is it not time for the Government to formulate a set of policies to tackle the issue?
Curtailing sales from hot counters to schoolchildren in the morning, providing nutritionally balanced meals in the school and confining students to school grounds during the lunch period are ones that spring to mind.
FRANK WALSH,
Coolballow, Co Wexford.