Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Food is pervasive, ubiquitous and cheap, with junky calories attractively cleverly packaged and delivered to us today in vast portions and quantities which would have been unimaginable 20 or 30 years ago. Today, we live in food swamps. I listened to Senator Thomas Byrne who referred to white bread, processed food, two litre bottles of fizzy drinks, giant super-sized bags of crisps, boxes, packets, and instant vending machines conveniently located. We have a national health crisis and I am very glad the Minister is here today. Other Members have spoken very well and we must in our time do something about this. It is a very complex issue and five minutes is only a couple of seconds in my lifetime to settle on a few points.

I heard the Minister say the World Health Organization's thoughts on 2030 may not be correct and it may be a little bit of fantasy, but Irish females seem to be most at risk of making Ireland the most famous country in Europe as we will be the fattest girls in Europe. Will the Minister write to the Minister with responsibility for sport and ask that we please encourage girls' sports among schoolchildren? My daughter who is, thank God, very sporty is in a beautiful school in Kilkenny which is very academic but is very bad at sport. There is volleyball, swimming and dancing, but it is all about boys and rugby, football and soccer. There is very little about girls. Once girls leave primary school, we have a real problem.

I did a little research last night because I thought, before I came in to speak about processed cardboard with no nutrition that tastes good and is instantly easy to serve with no stress and is cheap and quick, that I would go out and try to do a little shopping. I went to a supermarket on the way home. I know the Minister is a fairly busy man. I do not think he has a family, so he is not in supermarkets looking for deals on food to make meals as I am. I have loads of hungry people still living with me at home. I will share with the Minister all about the two litre bottles of fizzy drinks which are on special, with three for €4. Big giant packets of crisps were also on special, down to €1 which is half price. For €2.33 one could buy 1,826 calories, which is €0.44 per 100 g or €0.12 per 100 ml. Then I dropped into a fast-food restaurant. I had kept the receipt from the supermarket and there was a deal on the back of the receipt to send me to the fast-food restaurant. It cost €3.90 for a big hamburger, medium chips and a medium Coke. "Oh my God," I said delightedly about my €3.90, "what could I get for that?" I got 1,140 calories. I do not have time to tell the Minister about the fat and sodium.

This is a quick touch of reality about the job ahead for the Minister. The United States had this problem, and we used to think about the poor Americans who were so obese. We would travel there and speak in secret voices about the terrible problems the Americans had. They had a cold but we have pneumonia. We have embraced all of their problems. The year 2030 is a long way away in a political career but the Minister must be strong. I heard what he said in his closing speech and I was very pleased. He said the Government, local government, food industries, sport and recreation, communities and the media must all come together. The Ministers with responsibility for health, children, education, agriculture, sport, media, communications, the environment and tourism and the Taoiseach all need to come together urgently.

All the Senators have spoken very beautifully today, including my colleague, Senator van Turnhout, our eminent medical colleague, Senator Crown, and Senator Hayden, who was nearly more medically able in her speech. It was just brilliant.

How can we get our society to go back to healthy habits? To me, it is simple. Everyone here who knows anyone with an obesity problem should consider how their grandparents ate. Can they all just take a knife and fork and eat three times a day? Can they just go to the supermarket and buy either chicken, fish or eggs, which are a good source of protein and very low in cost? They should buy vegetables, fruit and potatoes and cook. It comes back to educating our children. Can we go back to school lunches and go back to the Minister for Education and Skills and make serious rules that there is nothing but healthy food allowed into schools? Can we educate mothers who are already obese themselves and do not know what to pack in those lunch boxes? Can we make cooking fun? Can little people in primary school be taught how to make simple things? Can we show them where food comes from by getting Bord Bia and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine involved? Grow It Yourself Ireland's website worked in conjunction with Innocent, the lovely company that makes the little smoothies, and they have had 20,000 schoolchildren growing little seed boxes and bringing them home so they know from where healthy foods comes.

We often speak here about child benefit and we used to have those awful words "food stamps". What about health stamps? What about giving some of our less well-off citizens something very easy such as health stamps so they can go in and buy chicken, fish, porridge, vegetables, fruit and potatoes? What about colour-coded food labelling? We can talk about food labelling but people do not have time to figure them out.They are incredibly confused. I am in the food business and, believe me, we are clever cats. We are very good at marketing. It needs to be absolutely bog standard that green is good for you and red means only a little treat at the weekends. We must establish nutrition standards for food sold by food manufacturers, distributors and caterers who cater to our hospitals and schools.