According to Irish state broadcaster RTE work published in the weekly general medical journal The Lancet, states that Irish women will be the second most obese in Europe by 2025. Speaking on RTE Radio One’s Morning Ireland today, Professor Donal O'Shea of University College Dublin said this situation could become almost impossible to reverse unless immediate action is taken by government. He went onto say that Ireland has moved from being one of the thinnest countries in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, to being one of the heaviest.
An increase in average incomes has played a large part in this. So too is the fact that Irish diets contain more sugar and salt than at any other time in our history. Diet is just one side of the coin. The other is exercise. Regrettably, the number of people engaging in physical exercise is in decline.
The stats on this make for sober reading. The latest data available on this comes from the Central Statistics Office Quarterly National Household Survey for Q2 2013. I present an abridged version of this below.
The regional data is also very interesting. The Border region and South-West are far more active than the other six regions. It's anyone's guess why this is the case. Worryingly, almost 50% of those sampled in Dublin, Mid-East, Mid-West and South-East were not a member of any sport of fitness club.