>The report calls for the ending of the junk food cycle and a switch away from processed foods to more plant-based diets.
>
>The report said the global food system can feed the world, but it has also made people heavier and sicker.
>
>The report also said it destroys wildlife, pollutes rivers and air, and is responsible for a third of greenhouse gas emissions.
>
>The report is concerned that ultra-processed foods and excessive red and processed meat are dominating the Irish diet at the expense of fruit, vegetables, plant proteins, whole grains, and sustainable seafood.
Sensible advice, and nothng new. I wonder what it would take to change ingrained habits? People are talking about chicken fillet rolls and fryups like they are a religious experience.
I live in a small town of about 1500 people and there are 5 fast food restaurants and two petrol stations selling breakfast rolls and other shite at either end of the town.
People will see “plant-based diet” and throw a hissy-fit
I think a big part of it is cooking skills. My experience of vegetables growing up was everything was steamed or boiled, hardly going to engender a love of vegetables is it?
Some people also just don’t have the cooking skills to make anything decent. I can cook to feed myself healthy enough meals but I don’t think I’ve ever made anything that actually turned out tasty.
Provincial town Ireland is now essentially one big take away (and vape shops).
Ah yes, and of course their answer is to make some things more expensive in a cost of living crisis rather than ensuring everyone in insanely time pressured lives has access to food that’s both convenient and healthy.
If you think it’s just a case of “learning to cook” or shopping better, your middle class out-of-touchness is showing.
Most people are fully aware their diets are not healthy and would like to eat better, but the idea that the answer is to make some treats even pricier than they are already (fast food is hardly “cheap” these days) is an utterly lazy, condescending approach that helps no-one.
Supermarkets frequently have poor stock of fresh produce and it got worse earlier this year due to crappy supply chains that don’t incentivise growing such things here. I mean pretty much all Irelands veggies are grown in North Dublin, the rest we import and then we seem to use most the rest of the farmland for Cows and shite.
There’s some ambiguity in our culture about obesity. We don’t want to stigmatise it or make obese people feel bad.
But the fact is that being obese accelerates the onset of chronic, age-related illnesses like cancer, heart disease, kidney failure etc.
People should eat less and mostly non-meat. Processed foods are a no no and sugar is something to avoid as much as possible. This isn’t far out health-freak stuff. It’s how to survive.
People have definitely gotten much less healthy over the past 20 years. I started secondary school in 2007 and there weren’t many overweight kids in my school. By the time I was in 6th year I started noticing a lot more overweight kids coming into the school. My mam remarked on it one day and once I noticed it I couldn’t stop noticing it. It’s all happened very rapidly.
I’m eating a jambon while reading this
I think covid and working from home fast tracked our habits further. (Naturally when your at home not moving)
But now that the majority of us are out and about the onus is on Us to keep fit and healthy.
30 mins of brisk low impact exercise 3-4 days a week is not the tallest of tasks.
That’s not to say you can’t have treats and enjoy food but there’s definitely a Balance.
I remember chatting to a person before on an app claiming to be “Anti Diet” as justification for being heavy and that line really irked me.
A Lot of people have surrendered to obesity and it’s sad.
I have a big problem with how they link red meat with processed meat. They are totally different things. There’s a difference between eating a grass fed beef steak and eating a hot dog….
I moved to Berlin and didn’t change my diet at all really but lost weight because I had to walk so muc in day to day life. The car is as responsible as the fast food restaurant.
I’m not irish and think a big problem is people can’t cook.
I’ve come across a lot of men in their 50’s who can’t cook at all. I really don’t understand how they’ve got on in life. I don’t consider myself a Gordon Ramsay but i can cook a stew or decent pasta dish and a few more.
Add the alcohol culture here, and yeah, it’s a real problem.
I agree with most of the comments here. Government should actively work to promote a healthy way of living bc it pays off in dividends for society as a whole. And people should learn to take better care of themselves. But I also think that our tempo and way of life have changed so much in the last 30-50 years, affecting how much time we have for out-of-work activities and self-care. It’s hard to see it because most of us are in the same boat, and we got into this situation like frogs in boiling water. And the solution sounds so easy, just get up and make a tasty veggie meal in 30 minutes. Still, in reality, it’s like saying to a clinically depressed person “Just stop being sad!”. Plus, food is something we associate with feelings of happiness, comfort, family and safety, so it’s no wonder we reach for easy, quick fixes that taste “good” and are addictive when tired and depressed, which is what a lot of society is currently. So, therefore, healthy eating and sports must be fostered in the formative years in the family environment. Hence, they become the norm and not the exception. There needs to be more education and incentive to eat better and healthier. Awareness works wonders. Just look at how much Jamie Oliver and Yotam Ottolenghi have influenced people’s eating habits and knowledge about food in the last 20 years. Also, women joining the workforce and men not taking up household jobs, including cooking, meant fewer homemade, fresh-cooked meals today than before. The problem isn’t your mothers cooking brussels sprouts for too long, the problem is that there’s nobody home to even boil the water for the sprouts.
went on a holiday in japan a few weeks ago. food was so healty. even the low quality 7/11 food they had felt nice and filling. little salt and lower fats.
I still get a weird salty taste in my mouth after eating irish foods and lunches again. we eat way too much bread and sandwiches
These foods are highly addictive drugs. We know certain foods, particularly those that combine high sugar and high fat have a substantial effect on dopamine dynamics. In the case of processed foods there are at times numerous chemical additives masquerading as having one reason for addition when they are known to increase the addictiveness of the product, in much the same way cigarette companies include additives to increase the addictiveness of their products.
We can talk about nutritional ignorance, learning how to cook, time constraints and cost ’til the cows come home but we’re at nothing. People use these drugs because they are highly addictive substances that leverage dopamine dynamics and people want their hit. Until they’re discussed in that context and we address the issue as one of addiction where addressing route causes of the addiction and emphasise harm reduction approaches to it, nothing’s going to change. We’re barking up the wrong tree entirely.
I work in a restaurant .. same people coming in every single day to eat breakfast.. I wonder how their blood test results look like after eating so much fried food every day
I have a different take from everyone who is suggesting there’s something fundamentally wrong with Irish food in general — we have the bones of a VERY healthy diet in our native cuisine. Look at what grows here: leafy greens like kale and cabbage, root vegetables like turnips, parsnips, and carrots, a fairly wide variety of fruit including blackberries, currants, apples, plums. Potatoes obviously which were traditionally eaten with skins (healthier). Wholegrain and mixed grains because we couldn’t afford to be picky — oats, barley, whole wheat. Flavour is easy enough — we have abundant herbs, pretty inexpensive for the most part and easy to grow if you have a window box or a back garden. There’s fish, mackerel in particular is abundant (though oily) and hake and salmon are incredibly easy to cook. Our agriculture produces a high quality range of dairy products, meat, and poultry. Even “unhealthy” foods like black pudding or sausages are generally adding protein and iron and have a place in a balanced diet for sure. **There is nothing about Irish food that is inherently bad or wrong.**
Everyone seems to accept this notion that we are burdened with a tradition of miserable boiled cabbage and gruel that we’ve had to cast off, and now the choice is just spice bags and fillet rolls for the masses, juice cleanses and vegan substitutes for the elites.
Healthy eating is not a fashionable south Dublin import based on novelties, it’s an overall balanced diet that includes more protein, vegetables, and whole grains, and less (but not zero) sugar, processed food, and takeaways. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to achieve that.
Moderation is the key , there is nothing wrong with the Irish diet inasmuch as there is anything wrong with the Spanish diet . The regular breakfast here in Murcia is toasted baquette covered in olive oil and tomato puree.
Is that healthy ? I have no idea but it is certainly delicious .
There are way too many organisations in Ireland telling people what to do.
One of their funders is the “Global Methane Hub” so that might give an idea of their agenda .
I think a lot of people here have no idea how common psychological issues with food are and how they are passed on through generations. This goes way beyond “sure just go to the gym and eat more fruit and veg”. These are among the most complex issues to work through and can fundamentally change your life. Throughout the years I’ve worked with an abundance of people in community and institutional work and I’m not kidding when I’m saying the amount of eating disorders, sensory food issues and trauma around food I’ve seen, is crazy.
It’s not a case that children got pickier, they were just beaten to a pulp if they wouldn’t eat what’s served and many of them passed their trauma on to their children and developed a very limited palate/skill around cooking.
I’d even go against the grain and would say that the young generation now has a way better understanding of healthy living and is way more open to new foods than the middle-aged demographic.
There is a mental health crisis ravaging the country and this fundamentally impacts the choices we make with food.
While working out is beneficial and can promote mental health, you won’t heal burn-out, trauma, stress and depression with it.
If you’re a person that has it figured out, can meal prep, can cook and regularly works out, congratulations, power to you.
But having some empathy and understanding that mental health in conjunction with diet is infinitely complex and even just a stressful period in work can impose an extraordinary state on someone, affecting their decision-making. Some smoke, other drink and do drugs leisurely and well, many people change their eating habits.
I think there is also a lack of education around what “healthy food” is. I’ve got mates that are just so blind to how many calories they consume daily vs burn and more importantly what those calories consist of. “I just had a few wee sausage rolls and wee jambons…. Then a footlong baguette for lunch then a Thai takeaway for dinner with a bottle of wine and 4 cans…. Thai has got to be healthy right”?
Nothing hard about chucking spuds in a steamer, mashing them, (or even baking/air frying with seasoning) steaming veg or baking them (with seasoning) and throwing a Chicken Kiev, Maryland or piece of breaded fish in the oven.
A decent meal which is infinitely better than takeaways all of which is 20 minute total to cook.
Laziness is the primary cause.
I feel diet is just one symptom of the bigger overarching problem that is the Irish lifestyle in general.
Alcohol abuse, recreational drug abuse, and a sedimentary lifestyle, on top of our crap diet has an undeniable link to most mental health issues in this country.
I worked in a place and a thirty year old woman told me she hadn’t eaten a piece of fruit in 10 years.
I’m a fat lazy fuck so yeah I very much agree.
People shove trash down their kids’ throats as soon as they’re on solids. Every damn kids menu is goujons, sausages, and pizza. And it doesn’t get any better with time.
I feel older generations are worse off in their relationship with food, and have been getting worse over the years.
Whilst I feel many of my fellow zoomers have inherited atrocious food habits from our parents, a lot more of us have become much more health conscious when it comes to food (or at least nutritional rather than health).
Air fryers are the way to go just throw a chicken breast in there and it’s done in 20-30m boiled some veggies in a pot throw abit of salad on the side there’s at least one healthy dinner for the week it’s not that hard
I’ll be honest, I’ve thought this for years but you only realise how bad it is when you leave the culture.
Take an average night out
Any random amount of pints (I’d have 8)
Takeaway meal afterwards
Big fry up in the morning
I’d do that every weekend sure it must be somewhere in the region of 5k calories there at least. So that’s an easy kgs on there. I could skip the breakfast or the takeaway and be in a much better position and have missed nothing really
Casual biscuits and tea through the week, big dinners from mammy and what not. It’s a disaster, it took me years to undue some of the mentally around it. I’m not usually one to push for schools to develop skills, they can’t teach everything but I think how calories work, macros, working out your own average, etc but I don’t know any parent that teaches that and you’re not going to know until well into your teens and that’s if you look.
29 comments
>The report calls for the ending of the junk food cycle and a switch away from processed foods to more plant-based diets.
>
>The report said the global food system can feed the world, but it has also made people heavier and sicker.
>
>The report also said it destroys wildlife, pollutes rivers and air, and is responsible for a third of greenhouse gas emissions.
>
>The report is concerned that ultra-processed foods and excessive red and processed meat are dominating the Irish diet at the expense of fruit, vegetables, plant proteins, whole grains, and sustainable seafood.
Sensible advice, and nothng new. I wonder what it would take to change ingrained habits? People are talking about chicken fillet rolls and fryups like they are a religious experience.
I live in a small town of about 1500 people and there are 5 fast food restaurants and two petrol stations selling breakfast rolls and other shite at either end of the town.
People will see “plant-based diet” and throw a hissy-fit
I think a big part of it is cooking skills. My experience of vegetables growing up was everything was steamed or boiled, hardly going to engender a love of vegetables is it?
Some people also just don’t have the cooking skills to make anything decent. I can cook to feed myself healthy enough meals but I don’t think I’ve ever made anything that actually turned out tasty.
Provincial town Ireland is now essentially one big take away (and vape shops).
Ah yes, and of course their answer is to make some things more expensive in a cost of living crisis rather than ensuring everyone in insanely time pressured lives has access to food that’s both convenient and healthy.
If you think it’s just a case of “learning to cook” or shopping better, your middle class out-of-touchness is showing.
Most people are fully aware their diets are not healthy and would like to eat better, but the idea that the answer is to make some treats even pricier than they are already (fast food is hardly “cheap” these days) is an utterly lazy, condescending approach that helps no-one.
Supermarkets frequently have poor stock of fresh produce and it got worse earlier this year due to crappy supply chains that don’t incentivise growing such things here. I mean pretty much all Irelands veggies are grown in North Dublin, the rest we import and then we seem to use most the rest of the farmland for Cows and shite.
There’s some ambiguity in our culture about obesity. We don’t want to stigmatise it or make obese people feel bad.
But the fact is that being obese accelerates the onset of chronic, age-related illnesses like cancer, heart disease, kidney failure etc.
People should eat less and mostly non-meat. Processed foods are a no no and sugar is something to avoid as much as possible. This isn’t far out health-freak stuff. It’s how to survive.
People have definitely gotten much less healthy over the past 20 years. I started secondary school in 2007 and there weren’t many overweight kids in my school. By the time I was in 6th year I started noticing a lot more overweight kids coming into the school. My mam remarked on it one day and once I noticed it I couldn’t stop noticing it. It’s all happened very rapidly.
I’m eating a jambon while reading this
I think covid and working from home fast tracked our habits further. (Naturally when your at home not moving)
But now that the majority of us are out and about the onus is on Us to keep fit and healthy.
30 mins of brisk low impact exercise 3-4 days a week is not the tallest of tasks.
That’s not to say you can’t have treats and enjoy food but there’s definitely a Balance.
I remember chatting to a person before on an app claiming to be “Anti Diet” as justification for being heavy and that line really irked me.
A Lot of people have surrendered to obesity and it’s sad.
I have a big problem with how they link red meat with processed meat. They are totally different things. There’s a difference between eating a grass fed beef steak and eating a hot dog….
I moved to Berlin and didn’t change my diet at all really but lost weight because I had to walk so muc in day to day life. The car is as responsible as the fast food restaurant.
I’m not irish and think a big problem is people can’t cook.
I’ve come across a lot of men in their 50’s who can’t cook at all. I really don’t understand how they’ve got on in life. I don’t consider myself a Gordon Ramsay but i can cook a stew or decent pasta dish and a few more.
Add the alcohol culture here, and yeah, it’s a real problem.
I agree with most of the comments here. Government should actively work to promote a healthy way of living bc it pays off in dividends for society as a whole. And people should learn to take better care of themselves. But I also think that our tempo and way of life have changed so much in the last 30-50 years, affecting how much time we have for out-of-work activities and self-care. It’s hard to see it because most of us are in the same boat, and we got into this situation like frogs in boiling water. And the solution sounds so easy, just get up and make a tasty veggie meal in 30 minutes. Still, in reality, it’s like saying to a clinically depressed person “Just stop being sad!”. Plus, food is something we associate with feelings of happiness, comfort, family and safety, so it’s no wonder we reach for easy, quick fixes that taste “good” and are addictive when tired and depressed, which is what a lot of society is currently. So, therefore, healthy eating and sports must be fostered in the formative years in the family environment. Hence, they become the norm and not the exception. There needs to be more education and incentive to eat better and healthier. Awareness works wonders. Just look at how much Jamie Oliver and Yotam Ottolenghi have influenced people’s eating habits and knowledge about food in the last 20 years. Also, women joining the workforce and men not taking up household jobs, including cooking, meant fewer homemade, fresh-cooked meals today than before. The problem isn’t your mothers cooking brussels sprouts for too long, the problem is that there’s nobody home to even boil the water for the sprouts.
went on a holiday in japan a few weeks ago. food was so healty. even the low quality 7/11 food they had felt nice and filling. little salt and lower fats.
I still get a weird salty taste in my mouth after eating irish foods and lunches again. we eat way too much bread and sandwiches
These foods are highly addictive drugs. We know certain foods, particularly those that combine high sugar and high fat have a substantial effect on dopamine dynamics. In the case of processed foods there are at times numerous chemical additives masquerading as having one reason for addition when they are known to increase the addictiveness of the product, in much the same way cigarette companies include additives to increase the addictiveness of their products.
We can talk about nutritional ignorance, learning how to cook, time constraints and cost ’til the cows come home but we’re at nothing. People use these drugs because they are highly addictive substances that leverage dopamine dynamics and people want their hit. Until they’re discussed in that context and we address the issue as one of addiction where addressing route causes of the addiction and emphasise harm reduction approaches to it, nothing’s going to change. We’re barking up the wrong tree entirely.
I work in a restaurant .. same people coming in every single day to eat breakfast.. I wonder how their blood test results look like after eating so much fried food every day
I have a different take from everyone who is suggesting there’s something fundamentally wrong with Irish food in general — we have the bones of a VERY healthy diet in our native cuisine. Look at what grows here: leafy greens like kale and cabbage, root vegetables like turnips, parsnips, and carrots, a fairly wide variety of fruit including blackberries, currants, apples, plums. Potatoes obviously which were traditionally eaten with skins (healthier). Wholegrain and mixed grains because we couldn’t afford to be picky — oats, barley, whole wheat. Flavour is easy enough — we have abundant herbs, pretty inexpensive for the most part and easy to grow if you have a window box or a back garden. There’s fish, mackerel in particular is abundant (though oily) and hake and salmon are incredibly easy to cook. Our agriculture produces a high quality range of dairy products, meat, and poultry. Even “unhealthy” foods like black pudding or sausages are generally adding protein and iron and have a place in a balanced diet for sure. **There is nothing about Irish food that is inherently bad or wrong.**
Everyone seems to accept this notion that we are burdened with a tradition of miserable boiled cabbage and gruel that we’ve had to cast off, and now the choice is just spice bags and fillet rolls for the masses, juice cleanses and vegan substitutes for the elites.
Healthy eating is not a fashionable south Dublin import based on novelties, it’s an overall balanced diet that includes more protein, vegetables, and whole grains, and less (but not zero) sugar, processed food, and takeaways. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to achieve that.
Moderation is the key , there is nothing wrong with the Irish diet inasmuch as there is anything wrong with the Spanish diet . The regular breakfast here in Murcia is toasted baquette covered in olive oil and tomato puree.
Is that healthy ? I have no idea but it is certainly delicious .
There are way too many organisations in Ireland telling people what to do.
One of their funders is the “Global Methane Hub” so that might give an idea of their agenda .
I think a lot of people here have no idea how common psychological issues with food are and how they are passed on through generations. This goes way beyond “sure just go to the gym and eat more fruit and veg”. These are among the most complex issues to work through and can fundamentally change your life. Throughout the years I’ve worked with an abundance of people in community and institutional work and I’m not kidding when I’m saying the amount of eating disorders, sensory food issues and trauma around food I’ve seen, is crazy.
It’s not a case that children got pickier, they were just beaten to a pulp if they wouldn’t eat what’s served and many of them passed their trauma on to their children and developed a very limited palate/skill around cooking.
I’d even go against the grain and would say that the young generation now has a way better understanding of healthy living and is way more open to new foods than the middle-aged demographic.
There is a mental health crisis ravaging the country and this fundamentally impacts the choices we make with food.
While working out is beneficial and can promote mental health, you won’t heal burn-out, trauma, stress and depression with it.
If you’re a person that has it figured out, can meal prep, can cook and regularly works out, congratulations, power to you.
But having some empathy and understanding that mental health in conjunction with diet is infinitely complex and even just a stressful period in work can impose an extraordinary state on someone, affecting their decision-making. Some smoke, other drink and do drugs leisurely and well, many people change their eating habits.
I think there is also a lack of education around what “healthy food” is. I’ve got mates that are just so blind to how many calories they consume daily vs burn and more importantly what those calories consist of. “I just had a few wee sausage rolls and wee jambons…. Then a footlong baguette for lunch then a Thai takeaway for dinner with a bottle of wine and 4 cans…. Thai has got to be healthy right”?
Nothing hard about chucking spuds in a steamer, mashing them, (or even baking/air frying with seasoning) steaming veg or baking them (with seasoning) and throwing a Chicken Kiev, Maryland or piece of breaded fish in the oven.
A decent meal which is infinitely better than takeaways all of which is 20 minute total to cook.
Laziness is the primary cause.
I feel diet is just one symptom of the bigger overarching problem that is the Irish lifestyle in general.
Alcohol abuse, recreational drug abuse, and a sedimentary lifestyle, on top of our crap diet has an undeniable link to most mental health issues in this country.
I worked in a place and a thirty year old woman told me she hadn’t eaten a piece of fruit in 10 years.
I’m a fat lazy fuck so yeah I very much agree.
People shove trash down their kids’ throats as soon as they’re on solids. Every damn kids menu is goujons, sausages, and pizza. And it doesn’t get any better with time.
I feel older generations are worse off in their relationship with food, and have been getting worse over the years.
Whilst I feel many of my fellow zoomers have inherited atrocious food habits from our parents, a lot more of us have become much more health conscious when it comes to food (or at least nutritional rather than health).
Air fryers are the way to go just throw a chicken breast in there and it’s done in 20-30m boiled some veggies in a pot throw abit of salad on the side there’s at least one healthy dinner for the week it’s not that hard
I’ll be honest, I’ve thought this for years but you only realise how bad it is when you leave the culture.
Take an average night out
Any random amount of pints (I’d have 8)
Takeaway meal afterwards
Big fry up in the morning
I’d do that every weekend sure it must be somewhere in the region of 5k calories there at least. So that’s an easy kgs on there. I could skip the breakfast or the takeaway and be in a much better position and have missed nothing really
Casual biscuits and tea through the week, big dinners from mammy and what not. It’s a disaster, it took me years to undue some of the mentally around it. I’m not usually one to push for schools to develop skills, they can’t teach everything but I think how calories work, macros, working out your own average, etc but I don’t know any parent that teaches that and you’re not going to know until well into your teens and that’s if you look.