Mr. Trevor White:

I thank the Chairman and members of the joint committee for this opportunity to appear before them. In the 1980s my mother owned a restaurant called Whites on the Green. Some Members are old enough to remember it. I was the little boy hiding under the coat rack. Many years later I published The Dubliner 100 Best Restaurants, which was the best-selling restaurant guide in this country. More recently I have written about the politics of food production.

I am not here in a professional capacity but as the father of two small boys. I am worried about bringing my boys up in a country with one of the world's highest rates of childhood obesity, a country in which an entire generation of children are in danger of dying younger than their parents. My views of childhood obesity will strike some Members as extreme. I believe that one day the cost of treating the diseases resulting from obesity will become so great that people will wonder why we did not act sooner. The idea that dangerous food was once advertised directly to children will strike us all as properly embarrassing.

Childhood obesity is not yet a major political issue in Ireland, which is the reason that industry still controls the terms of the debate and why my views are still regarded as eccentric. In that regard I have read the submissions to the joint committee with great interest. Time and again, members have been told how complex the issue of childhood obesity is and have heard many claims about product reformulation, the importance of the stakeholder approach, partnerships with industry, but most of all they have heard how consumers much change their behaviour. By 2030 more than half of Irish adults will be obese, yet right now the food industry is engaged in a very expensive campaign to blame the public for the problem. I find it truly remarkable that obesity is still framed as an issue of personal responsibility. This line seems plausible only because it is so familiar. We tolerated the same argument from big tobacco companies for decades and it is demonstrably rubbish. After all, the incidence of obesity increases year after year. Were Irish people any less responsible in 2011 than they were in 2010? Of course not. Blaming the victim is just an excuse to let industry off the hook.

Let us speak frankly about this public health crisis. Unlike many of the people who have come before the committee, I believe it is not nearly as complex as they suggest. Broadly speaking there are three options. Option one is to take the advice of industry and tighten those belts and build more gyms, jog and cycle to work, play camogie. These are all laudable goals in their way. There is room for the personal responsibility argument, as old and lazy as it is. After all, no one seriously proposes that people should exercise less - stretching those legs is an obvious good, as is full employment, peace in our time, the pot at the end of the rainbow. As a strategy for survival, it is simply ineffective. Yet this is all one ever hears, the same weary mantras, and when any form of Government intervention is mentioned, industry throws its arms to heaven and says that it will not work and it will cost jobs. Let us unpack that. If it will not work, why will it cost any jobs? The fact that we are only tinkering around the edge with talk of self-regulation and something as disingenuous as an advertising watershed speaks to the success of industry and our failure as a society.

If one wants a tangible example of the insincerity of what I am referring to, just consider the name of an industry lobby group that made a presentation this morning, The Nutrition and Health Foundation. This fake movement -----