Obesity can easily be tackled by teaching children how to cook

IN the earliest days of the pandemic, when hospitals postponed or cancelled routine appointments in order to manage Covid infection, there were warnings that delayed diagnoses would lead to preventable or curable illnesses being missed, with devastating consequences.

What we completely forgot about was a long-term illness that has equally devastating consequences – obesity. This week, the World Health Organisation ranked Ireland 11th in Europe for the highest number of overweight and obese adults. In Europe generally, three in every five adults is over the optimum weight, and one in three children, making this the second fattest region in the world after the United States.

Professor Donal O’Shea, the HSE’s clinical lead for obesity, delivered a sobering message about the effect of the pandemic. ‘Before Covid-19, we were seeing a levelling off of obesity rates in childhood to around one in four,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, the Covid restrictions were a recipe for weight gain in adults and children – and the recent UK schools data would say there has been a spike again.’

Complications

Failure to tackle childhood obesity leads to all sorts of complications as life progresses, both physical and mental. These include Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, liver disease, bone and joint problems, respiratory conditions such as asthma, sleep disorders, early onset puberty and menstruation, eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia, skin infections and fatigue.

On the mental health side of the equation, clinicians say that overweight or obese children are more likely to be teased and bullied, to suffer lower self-esteem and social isolation, increased risk for depression, poorer social skills and higher anxiety.

Failure to tackle obesity, not just in children but at any age, increases the risk of stroke, heart disease, some cancers and even dementia.

What is troubling about all of this is that it seldom, if ever, is the child’s fault, because children don’t do the supermarket shop, and they don’t cook for themselves. There was a time when home economics was a subject widely taught, but in my memory, only to girls; it certainly wasn’t on the curriculum of any boys’ school with which I was familiar. It included a lot of skills beyond cooking, including textiles and craft, but what it maybe did not overly emphasise was the benefit of good nutrition.

There is, surely, a strong argument that all secondary schoolchildren should learn about nutrition in some detail. For years now, we have taught children the dangers of smoking, and even encouraged them to nag their parents into quitting the habit. The same methods – brainwashing, if you want to see it that way – easily could be employed in teaching children about the dangers of fast food and processed food, and encouraging them to be equally censorious when these are served up to them at home.

The problem is that many of today’s parents also did not do home economics either, and they are just as clueless about nutrition. There also is a myth that good food is expensive food, when nothing is further from the truth. Every supermarket takes its turn offering those six fruits and vegetables on special offer, and all it takes is a little planning to turn them into a dinner everyone in the family will eat.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I know I’m fortunate in this regard. I have to cook every day only for myself, though it is arguable that this should make me less motivated to go to much effort, since no one else is around to appreciate it. I love my food, though, and I’m handy enough in the kitchen, and I find the chopping and dicing, grilling and roasting, oddly therapeutic at the end of a working day, so it’s not a hardship for me.

Research

If I had to serve three meals a day to children, would I take a few short cuts? Oh, undoubtedly, if only to avoid the washing up. There are nights I could use a pan and three saucepans, the food processor, a roasting dish, a grater, and half a dozen utensils – and stacking and unloading the dishwasher are my two least favourite chores. Nothing makes a heart sink faster than taking the cutlery basket out and returning the contents to their rightful homes. I do it, though, because it’s worth it in the long run. I was overweight going into the lockdowns, but not by an awful lot. The top end of a healthy body mass index, a calculation of your weight-to-height ratio, is 24.9. At the moment, according to calculator on the HSE website, mine is 26.5, which isn’t the worst it’s ever been. In fact, far from it, since I was hitting the mid 30s on that scale seven years ago.

What I did back then was a lot of research on nutrition, which perhaps is why I’m so evangelical about it now. In school, it never was mentioned, though I was never overweight as a child. Only when I sallied forth from home and discovered so-called convenience foods did I pile on weight and I ended up with Type 2 diabetes for my trouble.

I live with it, and its manageable, but it’s always at the back of my mind that I could lose my eyesight, or a foot, through retinopathy or neuropathy. That was completely avoidable had I known more about food.

I came to this information late in life, and that shouldn’t be the case. We all should learn this in school. We also need to look at the environments we are building, to ensure all new developments have open spaces for children to play in, because exercise and nutrition go hand in hand.

Above all, we must undo the damage caused by the pandemic, and rededicate ourselves to tackling childhood obesity. The ticking timebomb must be defused.