Whats the Truth About Obesity?

Ruth Hegarty, Secretary-General of Euro-toques Ireland, says it comes down to Children and Food Education

While discussing the government’s approach to tackling obesity recently with one of our member chefs, he told me that his 10 year old daughter had been at a school hockey game the week before and, having won the game, the teachers decided to ‘treat’ the children to lunch at McDonalds.

Being unaccustomed to eating fast food, his daughter opted for a wrap and some of the other children chided her for going for the ‘healthy option’. But then this drew her attention to the fact that the wrap actually had a higher number of calories than some of the burgers and she decided to change her order to a lower calorie option.

Now Minister Reilly might argue that this anecdote proves the case for putting calorie counts on menus. But to me it raises lots of worrying questions about our attitude to food and how we want to see this developing.

Firstly, if adults (indeed educators) see bringing children to a fast food outlet as a suitable treat after a sports activity, what kind of message are we sending out? If children see choosing an apparently healthy option as something worthy of derision, clearly we have done nothing to encourage positive peer pressure in this area. And do we really want our children to think of the food they eat in terms of calorie counts? Does anyone really believe that this is the path to better eating habits?

In Euro-toques our belief is that we need to send positive messages to children about food and, rather than constantly giving them dos and don’ts, we need to equip them with some practical tools to enable them to make better food choices. Simply put, this means teaching them how to buy good fresh food, how to prepare and cook it, and even how to eat it...because in many ways we do need to be re-trained on how to eat.

This is why last week many Euro-toques chefs around the country took time out from busy kitchens to share a little of their passion of food and cooking in Ireland’s classrooms, part of an annual ‘Mini-Chefs’ School Food Workshops week, an initiative by Euro-toques Ireland – Irish branch of the Europe-wide ‘European Community of Chefs’ – to encourage healthier eating habits in children.

The idea behind the workshops is simply to get children interested in food; how it grows or is produced, where it comes from, how to prepare and eat it, and to encourage them to think and ask questions about what they eat. A fundamental part of all the workshops is teaching children to taste food; children’s palates are constantly being ‘dumbed down’ by the big salt, sugar and fat hits of processed foods, which they come to crave, and as their palates develop they are often missing out on the more subtle tastes and aromas that make food so pleasurable and interesting.

That is why every workshop includes some time talking about the different tastes and the role that all the senses play in the eating experience; and in that way, almost re-training children to be fully aware when they eat – something that many adults would also benefit from.

We also believe that if we can only make children more open to tasting different things, and show them that no disastrous consequences will ensue from experiencing a strange or new flavour, we can break through a conservative attitude to food which, if not tackled, can often last a lifetime.

In general, public health campaigns based on negative messages and guilt trips have proven to be ineffective and we believe the current government approach to dealing with our chronic obesity problem and bad eating habits will be a dismal failure.

Not only because it fosters doubt and lack of confidence around food, further spurring people to choose the very processed ‘convenience’ food which have caused so many problems in the first place, but also because it does not give our children any of the tools they need to improve the way they – and future generations – will eat.

It may be quite an obvious thing to us, but healthier eating is closely linked to cooking ability. Clearly, if you are unable to cook, you are more likely to consume pre-prepared and mass manufactured foods and less likely to value fresh ingredients. A 2003 paper from Harvard University* showed that the increase in obesity in the US was in direct proportion to the reduction in time spent cooking at home and, it follows, an increase in consumption of ‘mass-produced’ food.

When it comes to children it has also been shown that involvement in food preparation and cooking not only increases their knowledge of what constitutes healthy food, but also makes them more inclined to eat the finished product (and if you needed a study to prove this, as it seems we do for everything these days, there have been several in the UK*).

Of course, growing their own food has the very same impact, making children feel involved in the process, instilling a pride in what they have achieved, and making them open to foods they may previously have scoffed at. But right now we are now facing a lost generation who cannot cook, and will not pass any cooking skills on to their children, and no one at policy level is doing anything to address this.

Ireland’s obesity rates continue to rise. Earlier this year Minister for Health Dr. James Reilly’s announced his intention to ask (and if they were not compliant, force) restaurants to include calorie counts on menus. This is essentially a US policy, which has been replicated in some states in Australia and was introduced as part of a voluntary scheme for fast food chains in the UK.

One really has to wonder why Dr. Reilly wants to follow in the wake of the country which long ranked as the fattest in the world and where obesity rates continue to rise. The US has a kind of sad, love-hate, relationship with food; eating far too much and eating the wrong kinds of foods, then going on all kinds of fad diets and eating foods that claim to solve all the problems that over-eating and junk foods have caused; reduce cholesterol, lose weight, boost immunity. This is the kind of behaviour that public policies based on negative messages and ‘guilt’ motivators result in.

Thinking of food in terms of calorie counts and nutritional tables instils a fear of food, encourages a negative relationship with it, and does nothing to encourage better eating behaviours. According to a recently published report* people in France show particularly low understanding of nutritional labelling on food, yet they have the lowest obesity rates in Europe. The French paradox is renowned; the French apparently eat many things which are viewed as fattening or unhealthy but manage to stay slim.

The reality is that French people, in the main, respect food and take pleasure in everything they eat. They demand quality ingredients and know how to cook them; taste is of utmost importance. And they remember the maxim, ‘everything in moderation’, something we would all do well to pay heed to. Incidentally, the country which displays most knowledge of nutritional labelling and average calorie content of food? The US.

We should be teaching our children that good food is one of the greatest pleasures of life and encourage them to love food, not fear it. The government are totally missing the point when they talk about calorie counts and nutritional labels. It is the very foods which carry all this information on their packages, which have destroyed our diets and our health. Unless people can cook, they have no chance of accessing better food.

We need a radical change in attitude and approach towards food in this country. We need a national policy on Food Education, something which currently does not exist. This should involve teaching children about food ingredients; how they are produced, where they come from, teaching them how to taste and appreciate food, giving them the skills to prepare food, and most of all, allowing them to enjoy it, without guilt or fear.

Knowing how to cook and to eat in a balanced way is an essential life skill – for some it can also become a lifelong passion.

*REFERENCES

*Study links rise in obesity to reduction in time spent cooking.
Why have American Become More Obese? Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 17, Number 3—Summer 2003—Pages 93-118
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/cutler/files/Why%20Have%20Americans%20Become%20More%20Obese.pdf
*Studies link Cookings Skills With healthier eating, UK
http://www.cancook.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Report-on-a-Cooking-Initiative-in-Liverpool-a-study-of-the-activities-of-Can-Cook.pdf
Why Cooking Skills are the Key to Healthy Eating http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16854572
*The Nielsen Global Survey of Food Labelling Trends 2012
59% of consumers worldwide are struggling to understand the nutritional labels on food packaging
North America: 57% of consumers indicate they understand the information
Europe the average of good understanding of nutritional labels is 45%; ranging from Portugal with 60%, Ireland and Denmark with 53%, down to France with 31%.