The Points Race
It All Adds Up
The national debate on obesity and fitness gained a little more momentum over the past few weeks with all parties tossing the doubled sided coin of exercise and nutrition.
The nutritional awareness campaign supported by Minister For Health Dr James Reilly continues in the consultation process until 29th February. Discussions include the proposal that fast food restaurants should display calorie content alongside their menus. Dr Reilly wrote to 24 outlets last year to invite their comments and suggestions for an Irish model. This approach is already being rolled out by McDonalds in the UK although there is no evidence to suggest that this method will make any difference to eating habits or lifestyle choice. In fact it may be viewed as a display of ‘caveat emptor’ on behalf of the Government and the suppliers to demonstrate their duty of care in the freedom of information. Whatever the outcome, it appears that the cost of this initiative will be carried by the food outlets just as EU regulation on food packaging labels requires manufactures to be more informative and consumer friendly.
The other side of the coin is the fitness and activity levels of the masses. The popular RTE programme Operation Transformation was an appropriate and wide reaching platform for Professor Niall Moyna to highlight some interesting points for discussion. His findings in a 5th year group showed alarmingly that only 6/16 boys and 0/9 girls had adequate baseline fitness for healthy living. A carrot of €1000 for the Athlone teenagers is being offered if they can reach acceptable levels within eight weeks of training.
Moyna’s radical approach to getting our schools more active includes a suggestion that fitness become a modular subject like maths or English with credits attached. Idealistically these points can then be accumulated towards the race system for third level places. Of course this raises the questions about resources. It could be argued that some schools would have an advantage over others but that could be argued for any subject already on the curriculum.
And how about standing for an entire 40 minute class once a day? Another suggestion which merits serious consideration. The healthy body healthy mind focus for our learning environments is a potential seed bed of inspired living for our leaders of the future.
Apart from the fitness and fatness debate, let’s not forget that this is also about health, wellbeing and potentially a smarter economy. Research conducted in both schools and workplaces to measure cognitive function demonstrates that exercise and nutrition have an important role to play in an individual’s fitness for purpose; physically and mentally.
While it appears that no blanket approach is going to have as much impact as smaller bite sized initiatives, we welcome any workable initiatives into our homes, schools, communities and workplaces with great gusto. And with the message ringing loud and clear from all angles of society it is our personal duty of care as individuals and parents to make informed and healthy choices. So whether we are calories counting or adding up our academic points, together we can eat this elephant chunk by chunk.
Patricia Murphy
nutrishon@gmail.com
6/2/12
