Our obesity epidemic
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HAVING begun to come to terms with the concept of global warming, we now have to get our heads around the strange notion of global fattening. And bizarre as it may seem, the two share some of the same causes.
Burning fossil fuels has brought about climate change. And fossil fuels, with the globalisation of the fast-food business, are being converted into cheap food, full of calories. They are thereby "driving the obesity epidemic", in the words of Professor Ivan Perry in the British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Professor Perry reports the results of a study by researchers in University College Cork which found that Irish teenagers are 24kgs (nearly four stones) heavier than the postwar generation. This is partly offset by the fact that they are taller: boys by 23.1cm (nearly 10 inches) and girls by 15.6cm (6.1 inches). But girth, not height, accounts for most of the increased weight. And notoriously, it is much the same everywhere, from well-run Denmark to China, where the one-child (one-boy) policy has produced waddling, wobbling "little emperors".
In Ireland, too many children grew obese -- and unhealthy -- during the Celtic Tiger boom.
Will things change in the recession? Professor Perry thinks not. Not, at any rate, if they continue to feed on snacks and takeaways full of oils, fats and sugars. Not if their parents do not wean them on to healthy food -- and out of the family car, on to their bikes.
