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Opinion: Ireland’s policies to ensure we eat healthy are inconsistent and not comparable to best practice
Governments around the world recognize the importance of a good diet for health and well-being as a priority area. Poor diet is responsible for a huge burden of suffering and premature death around the world. In Ireland, as in other developed countries, the impact of a poor diet on the burden of noncommunicable diseases is immense.
Poor diet is the most important risk factor for noncommunicable diseases, outweighing the combined effects of tobacco, alcohol, and physical inactivity. This highlights the urgent need for effective population-level programs to promote healthier diets globally and in rich developed countries like Ireland.
Health education strategies have a ‘limited’ effect
In the past, efforts to address obesity and promote healthier diets relied heavily on health education strategies and counseling interventions in clinical settings. Unfortunately, these programs assume a high level of individual effort, such as a high level of control over dietary choices, and are of limited efficacy. To address these priorities, many countries, including Ireland, have introduced policies to improve the eating and nutritional habits of the population with the ultimate goal of improving the health of the population and reducing the burden of disease. However, these policies are often incompatible with each other and are not comparable to international best practices.
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The RTÉ Brainstorm podcast looks at whether what we eat as children affects our future health
It is now clearly understood that to prevent diet-related chronic diseases, we must understand and address the “food landscape” the wide range of interconnected factors, such as food production, processing, marketing and distribution, that characterize our system. food and largely determine our diet. intakes. We need to implement consistent policies that are considered “best practices” compared to international standards.
What we found
Our Food EPI Ireland report identified existing Irish government policies and actions to improve the food environment and a panel of Irish public health nutrition experts assessed progress in implementing these policies against recognized best practices in other countries. They then identified the policy gaps and specific actions that would be necessary to address these gaps. In the final step, the panel prioritized these actions as recommendations for the Government to act.
While the experts identified that the supports available to support policy implementation were on par with international best practices, the large number of environmental food policies that were rated by the expert panel as deficient compared to best practices was a reason of concern. These included:
The need for a greater emphasis on reducing the marketing of unhealthy food to children on social media,
Limited use of financial policies to support healthy food choices, for example policies to make healthier foods cheaper,
Limited support to communities to limit the availability and accessibility of unhealthy food outlets, for example, by limiting the number of fast food outlets in residential neighborhoods or by placing zoning limits on the types of outlets of food that can be located near schools;
Limited support to private companies to promote healthy food in their workplaces
Provision of income support programs for healthy foods, for example, government schemes that offer discounts on specific foods for those receiving welfare payments
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From RTÉ Radio 1’s CountryWide, food writer Joanna Blythman in a 2019 Lancet report calling for a comprehensive change in the way the world eats
The panel identified four areas as areas of particular concern. These included
· Lack of government action on introducing targets for meals outside the home, for example, improving the nutritional quality of foods bought outside the home.
Do not restrict the promotion of unhealthy food for children on food packaging
No discernible progress toward establishing public procurement standards for foodservice activities to provide and promote healthy food choices,
· Lack of implementation of policies that promote the availability of nutritious food outlets.
The expert panel was asked to consider areas where there were gaps and poor implementation of policies and to identify and prioritize areas for government action.
What we have to do now
The government is strongly urged to act on recommended priority actions to improve the health outcomes of Irish citizens, with particular attention to disadvantaged or vulnerable groups. The top five policy recommendations were:
School feeding policies
Ensuring healthy food options are available in schools is a priority identified by the expert panel. They considered that the government should implement nutrition standards for all schools and clothing stores and provide support for the promotion of healthy food options in the school environment.
Income support
Establish an intergovernmental group to monitor and evaluate food-related income support programs for vulnerable population groups.
Healthy food subsidies (supports)
Ringfence’s revenue from unhealthy food taxes to enhance public health initiatives and provide healthy food subsidies targeted to underprivileged groups in the community.
Zoning laws
Introduce “No frying zones” zoning legislation to prohibit the location of unhealthy food outlets within 400 meters of elementary and secondary schools.
Public sector food options
Introduce a comprehensive policy on nutritional standards for the provision of food and beverages in the public sector.
The government needs to do more
The current health status of people living in Ireland, lifestyle factors and inequalities in health outcomes need to be urgently addressed through food environment reform. The food environment is largely determined by the political environment, and the government needs political action to create healthier food environments.
Ireland has an excellent opportunity to improve the diets of the Irish population, prevent obesity and diet-related diseases and associated increased healthcare costs by investing in highly profitable policies and programs, which have been successful in several countries. Obviously, this will require a much greater government effort than has been apparent to bring Ireland up to international standards for a healthy food environment.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the opinions of RTÉ
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