The Obesogenic Environment - Part 1

The work of The Cool Food School is centred around children - mine and yours. Our

children are very important to us - nobody disputes that. We cherish them from birth,

and as they grow, their little world expands and they are introduced to more of everything - people, toys, experiences and food.

We have control over most of their lives but as they grow and their personalities being to emerge and the outside world pushes it’s way in our doors, we start to lose a little bit of that control every day. 

You want them to play with lovely wooden toys but they want the giant plastic toy they saw in the catalogue. You want them to wear the cute dress or jumper but they want to wear track bottoms. You want them to eat porridge for breakfast but they want the cool, sugar-coated, cereal they saw advertised on tv.

All these things we have control over when they are smallies, ebb away as they develop their personalities and gain more exposure to the outside world. And none more so than the food they eat and the food environment around them.

The food environment we live in is an obesogenic environment. What does that mean?

This refers to the environment around us that is causing us to be obese. It is those things that we don’t have as much control over as we have in our own homes. 

The World Health Organisation says that Ireland is on course to become the most obese nation in Europe and further research from UCC estimates that 85,000 of this generation of children on the island of Ireland, will die from over weight or obesity. I don’t want this for my children and this is why I established The Cool Food School in the first place, to be part of the solution to this crisis that is affecting our children, yours and mine.

As parents, we all have a responsibility to feed our children in the best way we can (I will discuss this further in my next blog), but we also are living in a world where it’s impossible to buy petrol without passing by tons of sweets and treats, the barber has a jar of lollipops on his counter, your local pub grub kids menu consists of nuggets and chips and every kids tv programme or YouTube video is interspersed with ads for junk food.

I commissioned the artist Nadine Guerlain, to create an image that represents the obesogenic environment to me. This is the first element of that image - and the most important element - the child. Over the next few weeks, I will be completing the image in line with each blog - to explore the obesogenic environment in more detail. While we as parents have a responsibility in feeding our children, the environment around us has taken some of our control away. 

I’d love to hear your comments.