Ireland Is Facing Obesity Epidemic in Just 25 Years

IRELAND faces an obesity epidemic with half of the population likely tobe overweight in just 25 years’ time, a leading Irish health charity haswarned.

The Irish Heart Foundation (IHF) made its bleak prediction after UK figuresshowed the extent of the obesity problem there.

A landmark British study warned that as well as half of all Britons becomingobese by 2032, 86 per cent of men stand to become overweight in the next 15years, while 70 per cent of women will suffer a similar a fate within 20 years.

The IHF issued a stark warning yesterday, saying the worrying obesity trends inthe UK are mirrored in Ireland. It called on Irish politicians to makeprevention of heart disease a number one priority.

Chief executive Michael O’Shea said: ‘Ireland and indeed, Europe, is in thethroes of an obesity epidemicanditisthreateningto reverse the downward trend in mortality from heart disease which hasoccurred over the last 20 years.’ The British health secretary Alan Johnsonsaid that ‘obesity is a potential crisis on the scale of climate change’. Thesenew statistics show that Ireland is heading in the same direction.

The latest figures show that more than 300,000 children in Ireland areoverweight or obese and this is a figure that is growing every year by astaggering 10,000.

One in five adults is now obese andtwo out of five adults are overweight.

International Obesity Taskforce’s 2002 figures show that Ireland’s men are thefourth heaviest in the EU, while women come in at No. 7 in the league table.

MrO’Sheaadded:’Therisk factors for obesity such as heart disease, high blood pressure and highblood cholesterol, are largely preventable and at the foundation we workcontinuously with schools, workplaces and communities to encourage healthierliving.

‘But our efforts can only go so far inanenvironmentwhereitis increasingly difficult to make the healthy choice in what has been describedasthe”obesogenic” environment.’ MrO’Sheaalsocriticisedthe mass-marketing of ‘energy-dense foods to our children’, and said that alack of ‘adequate exercise facilities in our schools and the provision of safewalking and cycling paths’ made obesity even more difficult to control.

The British study, compiled by 250 leading scientists, said the obesity crisisthere is so bad it will take 30 years to reverse.

Modern lifestyles – with the easy availability of cheap unhealthy food andpeople relying too much on their cars – means it is almost impossibleformanypeopleto avoid putting on weight. And the effect on health – both in the UK andIreland – will be stark.

The report expects rates of type 2 diabetes to rise by 70 per cent, strokes togo up by 30 per cent and a 20 per cent rise in coronary heart disease. Therates of certain types of cancer will also go up.

Recently,thedirectorofthe WeightManagementClinicat Dublin’s Loughlinstown Hospital reported that eight out of ten type 2diabetes cases, and four out of ten cancer cases, were because of obesity. Twomore weight clinics, in Cork and Galway, will open within six months.

The British government’s chief scientific advisor, Professor David King,said:’Wemustfightthe notion that the current obesity epidemic arises from individualoverindulgence or laziness alone.

‘We live in a consumer society which encourages us to eat. We have a sedentarylifestyle. It’s an environment which means that if we just behave normally wewill become obese.

‘Wemayonlyputonabitof weight a day but there are 365 days in the year.’ Dr Susan Jebb of the HumanNutrition Research Unit said action against obesity needed to be asstrongas the action taken against infectious diseases in the nineteenth century.

She said people were eating more unhealthily and taking less exercise becausethat was becoming normal behaviour and ‘we act as a herd’.

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