Ireland's Fattest City/County

dodgerkk

We're always hearing lately that Ireland and its inhabitants are gettings fatter/obese - if this is the case (and we're really like the americans) then there's probably 1 or 2 countys/cities that are fatter than the rest..... if so - what do you think is Ireland's fattest city/county??:rolleyes:

Hanley

Fattest city HAS to be Dublin. Because lets face it... any other area with a significant amont of people living in it is still a town

hoenstly tho, considering the size of Dublins population, it has to take the cake.

tribulus

I can see this being a very anecdotal thread.

I'll say Dublin. Hectic work life, lots of commuting - hunger followed by gorging, people seemingly drive everywhere.

^^ + the fact is has more people than anywhere else, bound to be more fatties.

unreggd

+1 for Dublin

We are terribly romhair!

estebancambias

The young population of Dublin is not fat. I don't know about diets, but I would say as cities go the population is good enough in terms of lack of tubbyness. I was in town today and not one person was what I would call overweight.

Predhead

+1 for Dublin.

Then the fattest town has to be Gundalk. It's the biggest town..isn't it?! :pac:

Abi

Have to say its a difficult one to call. Being fat in Ireland works akin to the way the country is doing financially.

Take Dublin as previously mentioned: You get top money here for over-priced houses and cost of living. You are made to work harder, and often cuts into your personal time.


The above said, convience food is far to readily available - across the board. I hate seeing fat children. Whatever the parents decide to inflict on their own bodies is their own business, they are setting their children up for life with health problems.

Ive got kids, they eat healthily. I dont want to alienate them, so I allow the odd treat. But my rewards come in books and toys, not food.

g'em

Abigayle wrote: »

The above said, convience food is far to readily available - across the board. I hate seeing fat children. Whatever the parents decide to inflict on their own bodies is their own business, they are setting their children up for life with health problems.

Ive got kids, they eat healthily. I dont want to alienate them, so I allow the odd treat. But my rewards come in books and toys, not food.

On a related note...

ITV 9pm tonight (Tuesday 6th May): Too Fat to Toddle

"The issue of childhood obesity is highlighted when four families take part in an experiment to see if they can change their present eating habits and influence their children's future health. They learn simple techniques to implement these suggested changes and have six weeks to put theory into practice - with startling results."

Saw a clip this morning and it will probably prove to be very frustrating viewing. To me, overfeeding a child is borderline neglect but at the same time who is really to blame - the parents who genuinely don't know better? the food manufacturer's for effectively manipulating food products to be taste-rich but nutritionally void? Or the giovernment for not providing educationa nd information about what, exactly, healthy food choices are?

Roper

I'm not sure childhood obesity is as prevalent as the reactionary media and Channel 4 would have us believe. In my class in school, before the term obesity was ever in our vernacular, there were always "fat kids". By the same token, in the classes I teach, there are overweight children, but never many.

The next thing we look down our noses and keyboards at is THE PARENTS! Of course, they just take their children to McDonalds and Burger King and eat out of the freezer department right? To be honest (and an important thing to note here is that I work in general with kids who have been brought to acivities), in my experience parents are concerned about their kids, and look after them very well. In my years of coaching kids I've come across two kids who I would have said were in severe trouble as their parents didn't seem to have a clue how to feed them correctly.

Around my area where I live and in all the kids I meet through coaching, I would say 95% are active and healthy. I would say that up to the age of 12 or so, kids have a lot fo things to play and do, but after that, activities fall away and there's the temptations of smoking, drink and having your own money and freedom means you can eat crap when you want to. I think the problem is there.

g'em

Roper wrote: »

I'm not sure childhood obesity is as prevalent as the reactionary media and Channel 4 would have us believe.

It's a very difficult thing to quantify, and as trib said much of the discussion about it will be anecdotal. Roper I'm delighted to hear that your own experiences with kids' activity levels is good but then again, given that many of the kids you come across are through coaching anyway, that could could be a skewed sample?

To the best of my knowledge there isn't a complete up-to-date reference for childhood or teenage obesity in Europe, nevermind the UK or Ireland. Various reports from the US cite children anything from 5 - 25% of kids between the ages of 2-19 as overweight or obese. Some of the data from the American Obesity Association:

Prevalence of Obese Children (Ages 6 to 11) at the 95th percentile of Body Mass Index (BMI)
1999 to 2000 - 15.3%
1988 to 1994 - 11%
1976 to 1980 - 7%

Prevalence of Obese Adolescents (Ages 12 to 19) at the 95th percentile of Body Mass Index (BMI)
1999 to 2000 - 15.5%
1988 to 1994 - 11%
1976 to 1980 - 5%


As for data from closer to home the following was from the BBC who say that "One in 10 six-year-olds is obese. The total number of obese children has doubled since 1982. On present trends half of all children in England in 2020 could be obese."

And this is from a presetnation made by the Irish Heart Foundation found here:

• 1 in 5 school age children in Europe is overweight or obese. (International Task Force on Obesity, 2003)
• 1 in 5 Irish children aged 5-12 years is overweight or obese. (IUNA, 2005; ERSI, 2005).
• Survey of almost 600 Irish children, 5-12 years (IUNA, 2005): One fifth of Irish children’s energy intake from food comes from sweets, snacks and biscuits; Daily intake of soft drinks averages about 2 glasses, mainly sugar-containing drinks; Displacement of nutritious foods –low intakes of calcium, iron, vitamins A, C, D, and folate.

celestial

I know these areas gets a lot of flack already and I really don't want to do this, but...http://www.google.ie/trends?q=chocolate&ctab=0&geo=IE&geor=all&date=all&sort=0

t-ha

Just on the stats of obese kids from 1976 - 2000, I know several primary school teachers both present and retired who have all said that kids have been getting progressively bigger over the years - by which I mean taller and larger as opposed to fatter. If that's true it would skew stats based on a BMI scale.

Roper

I would be very dubious about stats from other Western countries, having had some experience in trying to graft across stats from Britain when none are available in Ireland you'd be surprised how different things can be.

Yes G'em you're right, I added a proviso on the fact that most kids I encounter will be active in any case as they're being brought to me. However even if I was a primary school teacher and not involved in any fitness activity, my evidence would still be anecdotal and prove nothing about anything anyway.

I suppose I get tired of hearing people doing the "I blame the parents" routine when I see and deal with a lot of parents and in my experience, they are concerned and look after their kids welfare extremely well. There's always one who'll give you hassle but usually, that's because they're concerned about their kids. We usually find a middle ground, though I've had a couple of doozies alright.

Kids need to be led a lot of the time too, and I just don't think people realise that. If I gave a room full of ten year olds an X-Box, they'd sit and play on it for ages. If I walked in 30 miniutes later and said I was going to organise a game of rounders or football outside for them, I'm willing to bet they'd ditch the X-Box and come outside with me. That's my experience of kids. Maybe other people's differ. Right now I'm at my desk at home and I'm looking out on a green full of kids... and eh... oh... my dogs, so I suppose I must have left my side gate open. Oops.

Look I'm just giving my opinion, I tire of the "fat kids" thing when it's obvious to me that the real obesity problem is in adults who have just stopped doing stuff.

g'em

Roper wrote: »

Look I'm just giving my opinion, I tire of the "fat kids" thing when it's obvious to me that the real obesity problem is in adults who have just stopped doing stuff.

I'm not arguing with you there at all.

Now get those dogs back in or you'll be responsible for childhood blindness...

Roper

g'em wrote: »

I'm not arguing with you there at all.

Now get those dogs back in or you'll be responsible for childhood blindness...

LOL if blindness is contagious then those kids are in trouble because one of them can't see anymore. Besides, if I bring them in now those kids will be knocking on my door in 5 minutes asking for them out again. Those dogs have a better social life than me!

g'em

A blind dog usually = old dog so you've little to worry about so. And if the other one is > 12 mths and wormed and not pregnant and none of the kids (to the best of your knowledge anyway) have a history of pica... then it should be ok

lubie76

Some of you may be interested to know that there is a project at the moment being run by UCD for the World Health Organisation called the European Childhood Growth Surveillance Initiative

This initiative aims to monitor child growth and overweight and obesity trends throughout Europe and is targeted at primary school children aged 7 years. It involves completing a school questionnaire and taking measurements of weight, height and waist circumference, by a team of field workers including dieticians, on the school premises.

There are 180 schools been sampled in Ireland over two months and the intention is that this will continue to take place every two years in order to set up a national database similar to the rest of Europe.

Too early yet for results as its being run until the end of May but will be interesting to see how we compare to the rest of Europe and the US.

Roper

g'em wrote: »

A blind dog usually = old dog so you've little to worry about so. And if the other one is > 12 mths and wormed and not pregnant and none of the kids (to the best of your knowledge anyway) have a history of pica... then it should be ok

This is totally OT, but what is pica and why would the kids be in danger? Isthat blindness again? They're both 9 btw, and the dog is half blind and the bitch is wormed, fat, old and stupid.:D

bwardrop

I recently attended a presentation gived by Prof. Niall Moyna, Head of School of Health & Human Performance in DCU. He gave some interesting fact and figures which may be of interest here.

- Overall 65% of Irish (primary) school children are not meeting the current physical activity recommendations (70% of boys and 58% of girls)

- In the US, 17% of 12 - 19 year olds are overweight, 5% are obese. In Ireland the figures are - Boys: 17.6% overweight, 6.2% obese. Girls: 16.6% overweight, 4.3% obese. The figures for Ireland are almost identical to the figures from the US.

- Shuttles completed to exhaustion in a 20MST (bleep test) for children classed as normal, overweight and obese:
Boys: 77, 68, 42
Girls: 42, 33, 22 (22 shuttles = 440 meters at a quick walk / very slow jog pace. Less than half a kilometer)

- 69% of children are transported to school every day

- In 2002, 1 in 5 (21%) of 18-34 year olds completed no physical activity in the previous week

Very startling results. The presentation (and others) may be downloaded here - http://www2.wit.ie/News/EventsCalendar/HealthConference2008/

g'em

Roper wrote: »

This is totally OT, but what is pica and why would the kids be in danger? Isthat blindness again? They're both 9 btw, and the dog is half blind and the bitch is wormed, fat, old and stupid.:D

Pica is the habit of eating non-food substances (coal, chalk, paper) and specifically the habit of eating soil = geophagia. Kids with geophagia and/ or in ownership of a dog are at an increased risk of contracting the eggs of the parasite Toxocara canis which are shed by the dog into the soil via its faeces. If the egg(s) is ingested it will hatch in the intestine, burrow through the soft tissues and end up in most of your organs. If one migrates to the eye it causes a serious inflammatory reaction as your body fights to kill the intruder, and often leads to blindness.

Recent evidence has also linked direct contact with unwormed, young (under 12 months) dogs as being a risk factor. ALL dogs are born with the parasite (it's transmitted transplacentally and transmammarily from bitches) but once the pups are wormed with a good anthelminthic (Drontal is ideal) infection will be minimised, and as dogs get older and their immune system strengthens they generally rid themselves of infection also.

But the best preventative measure of all is simly to make sure that kids (and adults) always, always, always wash their hands after touching dogs and cats, who can harbour T. cati.

/completely OT discussion

Roper

Completely OT, but extremely interesting! When you said the blindness thing I thought you were one of those folks who think my dogs are deadly weapons and are going to attack children on sight.:D

- In 2002, 1 in 5 (21%) of 18-34 year olds completed no physical activity in the previous week

That doesn't surprise me at all. Out of the other 4 I wonder how many are physically active on a regular basis?

Whenever I advertise our club, I always try to impress upon people that our classes are in the main for unfit people who want to get into something. The number one thing I hear from prospective members is "yeah well I want to build up my fitness first before joining anything". When I hear that I know I'll never see them at the gym so I usually spend a minute or two telling them why that's my job and then I just leave them off.

cowzerp

i teach PE to kids every now and again and they can never last the hour bar 2-3 of the sporty kids, i would say 70% are fat, most people think obese is massive! its not necessarily and ireland is a very obese country..

Khannie

estebancambias wrote: »

The young population of Dublin is not fat.

WHAT????? I can't get over how fat all the school kids are these days. Maybe they were all in school when you were going through town.

bwardrop

I don't necessarily think that Dublin would come out as Ireland fattest city just because it has the greatest population - you have to make your results relative...

Just for arguments sake we'll say the population of Dublin is 1,000,000 and that 100,000 are overweight - 10%

Now, there are lots of towns / villages in Ireland that have no real amenities (parks / gyms / pools - even a sports hall in the school). Lets say that this place has a population of 5,000 and 750 are overweight - 15% - "fatter" than Dublin.

Now they are totally made up figures, just to illustrate a point. Just because Dublin has the population, doesn't mean it will "win".

In the US in 2006, Mississippi was calculated to be 'fattest' state (29.5% of adults were obese), yet Mississippi is only the 31st most populated state. California had the greatest population, 22.7% of whom were obese.

hunnymonster

on a related note the following just arrived in my inbox
[FONT=&quot]Teens, food and fitness
(not sure the link will work)
I haven't read it all yet but I would highly respect Mike Gibney and Albert Flynn.

"The study revealed that since 1990, the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased from 6% to 19% in boys and from 15% to 17% in girls."

"The survey confirmed that teens with overweight or obese parents were more likely to be overweight or obese themselves, and parents of overweight teens generally thought their children’s weight was fine."
[/FONT]

RacoonQueen

g'em wrote: »

On a related note...

ITV 9pm tonight (Tuesday 6th May): Too Fat to Toddle

"The issue of childhood obesity is highlighted when four families take part in an experiment to see if they can change their present eating habits and influence their children's future health. They learn simple techniques to implement these suggested changes and have six weeks to put theory into practice - with startling results."

Saw a clip this morning and it will probably prove to be very frustrating viewing. To me, overfeeding a child is borderline neglect but at the same time who is really to blame - the parents who genuinely don't know better? the food manufacturer's for effectively manipulating food products to be taste-rich but nutritionally void? Or the giovernment for not providing educationa nd information about what, exactly, healthy food choices are?

GAH!!! Was looking forward to watching this then got sidetracked by some supersize -v- superskinny show on E4.

thirdmantackle

at the end of the day, cheap food is generally ****E

fast food is cheaper - freezer and microwave

many people cannot afford to buy good healthy food

bwardrop

thirdmantackle wrote: »

at the end of the day, cheap food is generally ****E

fast food is cheaper - freezer and microwave

many people cannot afford to buy good healthy food

I think that it is more to do with people being lazy - if you shop smart, you can get healthy food plenty cheap. It depends where you go - in my local Tesco's, €20 will buy enough fruit and veg for about 3/4 days. If I go to my local fruit and veg shop, that €20 will buy enough fruit and veg to last a week. The rest of what you need also be bought fairly cheaply too if you shop smart.

Fresh food takes time and effort to prepare - not much, certainly not as much as most people think, but still more than just bunging it in the microwave. I think this is what puts most people off, rather than price. After all - a weight watchers microwave meal is about €3/4 - 7 of these would set you back at least €21 before you bought anything else. Same as a whole lot of fruit and veg.

If you can afford convenience food, you can afford proper food.

t-ha

bwardrop wrote: »

I think that it is more to do with people being lazy -

There is also the education factor, if you grew up eating take-aways and crap you're not going to know how to make good food. I'd say that laziness is more of a problem for most though.

PrettyInPunk

Khannie wrote: »

WHAT????? I can't get over how fat all the school kids are these days. Maybe they were all in school when you were going through town.

+1 young people are so fat! Not even just huge the amount of just chubby verging on fat people is unbelievable

bwardrop

Another thing I have noticed is a disturbing shift in the body composition of young people, particularly young females. I have observed and tested a lot of girls who would be classed as "sarcopenic obese" - this is when you have significantly decreased muscle mass and increased fat mass. The problem is well hidden, as the decreased muscle mass is 'balanced out' by increased fat mass. It is usually something associated with elderly / infirm populations.

In these people, everything looks fine - body shape, weight, BMI, dress size etc. are all within normal limits, but when we analyze body composition they have about 30% body fat or more. This definitively classifies them as obese. These people are slipping under the radar due to the misconception that size / weight are the most appropriate determinants of obesity.