Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach and apologise for arriving late. It was a morning of meetings and more meetings. I welcome the Minister of State and her colleagues to the committee. I wish them well in their work ahead.

A few things are important in relation to health promotion. We must undertake this endeavour in the schools for starters. It must become trendy. It is not trendy enough now to eat carefully or to be within a desirable weight. I know there are ads that bring this aspect to attention but I do not think it is impacting to the extent it should. As well as that, a wide variety of healthy foods are available in shops and supermarkets today but I do not think enough is done to promote the value of such healthy foods. For example, there is a campaign across the globe now to eat no meat, drink no milk and so on and so forth. The only thing this is going to lead to is brittle bone disease at a later stage of life. We do not want this either. First of all, there is a real need for a concentrated campaign through the schools and on television to focus on young people and the effects such an approach can have on them in a very short time. It is all beneficial. Care should be taken to ensure that the food being promoted is healthy food and that it will have a beneficial impact. To what extent can we improve on this?

I would be the last person in the world to comment negatively concerning people in this regard. I shed weight once upon a time. I did not have to but I did it once upon a time. I lost 4 stone in two months, which was fairly rapid. Everybody said it would go back on again. No, it did not because the crucial issue is portions and how much we eat of a thing. Everywhere we go, we see huge portions of food being served to people, those young, middle-aged and older. I cannot see the need for this at all. It is only habit anyway. We eat more, and as a result of eating more, we want to eat more because more space is being created for the need. We should, therefore, concentrate on the young people for starters.

There is a problem with young people nowadays in respect of inaction and sitting on the couch looking at television and eating fast foods and so on. The fast foods themselves are not always damaging; again, it is the portions. We can look at fast food that has, for instance, meat in it, such as beef. It is not going to kill anybody. The problem is the amount of it. It is the same in relation to all takeaways, etc. This is a major industry these days. To what extent can we improve targeting the likely victims of unhealthy food? I ask this because they will have difficulty with various diseases in future unless they arrest the level to which they consume unhealthy food.