Child obesity in Ireland in focus as experts tell Committee on Children & Youth Affairs about scale of problem, ways to change habits

Since March the Committee has gathered expert testimony on the scale of the problem and seeking professional pointers on possible ways to reverse the trend.

Wednesday’s speakers include:

• A Bord Bia official who helps to oversee Food Dudes, a project that promotes healthier eating in schools, summer camps and other youth events;
• Directors of a Laya Healthcare-funded agency, Real Nation, that encourages positive behavioural changes in children’s physical activity and eating habits; and
• A senior Trinity College Dublin researcher who helped shape the nation’s most detailed portrait of childhood development over the past decade, Growing Up in Ireland.

First up is Dr. Cathal McCrory, a senior research fellow at Trinity’s Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing. Until 2012 he was a research analyst at the Economic and Social Research Institute where he helped to direct Growing Up in Ireland. The study, which began in 2006, follows 8,000 9-year-olds and 10,000 9-month-olds as they progress towards adulthood. McCrory and his colleagues at the ESRI and Trinity have used the twin longitudinal studies to document the pattern of weight gain in children, how this has evolved over the past decade, and the forces driving that change.

Next to address the Committee are Aidine O’Reilly, managing director of Real Nation, and D.O. O’Connor, director of business development at Laya, Ireland’s second-largest health insurer. Real Nation deploys project and event managers to schools and other youth centres to work with teachers and pupils on fun exercise programs and smarter food choices. Its healthy lifestyle homework programme, Super Troopers, encourages children to apply the principles at home with their family.

The final witness, Mike Neary, is Bord Bia’s director of meat and horticulture. Bord Bia manages the Food Dudes Programme, which brings fresh fruit and vegetables daily into classrooms nationwide as part of teaching children to develop a taste for a healthy diet. The strategy involves child-friendly stories and challenges in which cartoon Food Dudes foil the promoters of unhealthy eating, the Junk Punks.

“As we gather evidence to recommend positive changes for our nation’s children, we need the clearest possible picture of why children are becoming clinically obese at a rate never observed before,” said Committee Chairman Alan Farrell TD. “The expertise of Dr. Cathal McCrory should prove valuable in understanding why we have reached this alarming point. Better understanding the impact of existing programmes like Real Nation and Food Dudes should help us to identify a more effective policy path and guide our children towards a more active and nutritious lifestyle.”

Members of the public who would like to make a written submission to the Committee are encouraged to provide their views via email to childhoodobesity@oireachtas.ie. The deadline for submissions is noon on Friday, May 11.

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You can see Wednesday’s meeting live here

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Learn more about the Committee’s work and membership here