Children should get only one Easter egg this year, obesity expert says

Vivienne Clarke

An obesity expert is urging parents to buy only one easter egg for each child.

Professor Donal O’Shea, who is HSE’s clinical lead on obesity, warned that it was “a flawed narrative” if parents think it is okay to indulge for one day.

He said such an attitude was flawed because the food and drinks industry wanted to increase the daily consumption of ultra-processed foods and used occasions such as Halloween, Christmas and Easter to promote them.

“People don't understand how hardwired the brain is to be unable to resist the combination of high fat, high salt and sugar. It is. You cannot stop,” Prof O’Shea told RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne.

The food and drinks industry had opposed the sugar tax “violently and very effectively” for a decade, he said. But when it finally came in, the total sugar content people were ingesting reduced.

“We're beginning to see a levelling in our obesity rates and trends, which is positive.”

Obesity rates in Ireland were now “edging down” to 20 per cent from 23 per cent in adults, he said, which was a very encouraging trend.

Prof O’Shea said it was also encouraging that Ireland was not seeing a spike in weight in school-age children as had happened in the UK during Covid.

“That's positive. So in the wide I think parents are doing a fantastic job, because one in five of our children are overweight or have obesity, but four in five don't. And that's pretty good in the toxic environment that we have.

“But parents need to realise that at every turn, the food and drinks industry is trying to push them towards ultra-processed [food]. And if you're high on ultra-processed food as a child, your palate will reject broccoli, your palate will reject the whole foods that contain the vitamins and minerals that you need to grow healthily.”

Prof O’Shea said that new drugs available to treat obesity would be “a game changer”.

“They work very well for about a third of people. They're kind of okay, not great for a third, and they don't work for the other third. So it's not this silver bullet that people think, 'oh, if I could just get on Ozempic,' ... But what we have now for the first time is safe treatments for the disease of obesity other than surgery, which is a very good treatment.”

However, Prof O’Shea said such drugs were not yet available for children in Ireland, though the HSE was going to continue to lobby the Medicines Management Agency for children (over the age of 12) with obesity attending the HSE for services.