Six in ten of us are overweight, says CSO

MORE than six in ten Irish people are now overweight or obese, according to worrying Central Statistics Office figures.

The increase – up from 60% in 2015 – is contained in the CSO’s annual review and is another worrying reminder of the country’s growing weight problem.

Health expert Dr Eva Orsmond said that people need to ‘wake up’ to the consequences of obesity and start making changes to their lifestyle.

She told the Irish Daily Mail last night that Ireland’s obesity figures will only improve if people start monitoring their weight and become more aware of the high level of calories in food.

‘If you have an extra 20 calories every day for 365 days, you will put on 2.2 pounds in weight over a year,’ Dr Orsmond said.

‘Twenty calories is basically a cup of tea with a drop of milk in it.’

This comes after worrying new figures released earlier this week revealed that a fifth of all Irish 13-year-olds are now overweight, while a further 6% are obese.

The Growing Up In Ireland survey found that girls were ‘significantly more likely’ to be overweight.

It was also revealed that more than three in ten teens in the lowest economic class were obese or overweight, compared to just 21% in the highest.

Dr Orsmond stressed that educating children about food is vital to ensure that obesity levels are reduced.

She said: ‘This trend is not going to stop unless we do really dramatic changes in education and in monitoring. We need to start young, we need to start weighing children at school so that we increase awareness from when people are young, that’s the only way forward.’

She also said that people need to ‘wake up’ to the fact that it is a disease, and can cause other health problems.

In the CSO figures, a person is considered overweight if their body-mass index is 25 or higher, and is classified as obese if it exceeds 30. It comes after the United Nations revealed last month that Ireland is the ninth fattest nation in Europe.

And last year, the Irish Society for Clinical Nutrition & Metabolism and the Association for the Study of Obesity on the Island of Ireland made the alarming prediction that one-third of Irish adults will be obese by 2025.

THAT the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office indicate that we are getting fatter as a nation, with 62% of the population now deemed either overweight or obese, is truly shocking. Childhood obesity has, for some time, been a major area of concern, and we all now recognise that steps must be taken, particularly by parents, to help their children achieve a healthier lifestyle. Exercise and sensible eating habits need to play their part.

For adults too, however, weight is obviously a major issue, with many people, it seems, not even aware that they are in the danger category when it comes to excessive body weight.

We must become more body aware, recognising that any Body Mass Index that exceeds 25 equates to being overweight, while a BMI of more than 30 is categorised as obese.

With close to two-thirds of the population carrying too much weight, these CSO statistics should be a wake-up call for all of us.