Madam, - With reference to Kate Holmquist's article "Off the Scales" (Weekend Review, January 5th), how can we hope to control the obesity epidemic among our young people when junk food is being rammed so enthusiastically down their throats by advertisers and in shops?
I was astounded, on the last day of Christmas, to see an enormous display of Cadbury's Cream Eggs taking pride of place in the local supermarket, even though Easter is nearly three months away. Meanwhile the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland has still taken no steps to ban junk food advertising.
How can parents hope to instill healthy eating habits when the pester power of persistent children is being so flagrantly exploited on all fronts? - Yours, etc,
SUSAN MURRAY,
Model Farm Road,
Cork.
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Madam, - Kate Holmquist's article "Off the scales" (Weekend Review, January 5th) puts great emphasis on encouraging walking to combat obesity. Walking can be enjoyed by practically everyone, young and old, and costs very little.
Ideally everyone, except those living in cities and large towns where it is impracticable, should be able to find a nearby path, provided where necessary with stiles, signposts, and footbridges. We are so far from that here that Fáilte Ireland can only aspire to having a walking route in every county! Worse still, many of the existing routes are on busy roads, and we can expect little more from any new routes. (We note, incidentally, that 20 per cent of the road deaths here are to pedestrians; how many were people who had nowhere else to exercise?)
So where has this ideal been achieved? Well, it's close enough to achievement about 100km east of Dublin. In Anglesey, a county smaller than Dublin, there are 1,000km of pathways with all the accompanying infrastructure. The same applies all over England and Wales and in many other countries in Europe.
The basic cause of Ireland's paucity of suitable walking routes is an obvious one: the utter failure to tackle the powerful farming lobby by forcing farmers to accept a reasonable network of paths through their lands. Also in your issue of January 5th, Noel Whelan lauds Michael Martin for taking on the seemingly powerful smoking lobby. We all now benefit from his courage. When is the same courage going to be shown on this issue? - Yours, etc,
ROGER GARLAND,
Chairman, Keep Ireland Open,
Butterfield Drive,
Dublin 14.