Eating healthy is not expensive

No one knew anything about nutrition.

Convenience food wasn't a thing, beyond baked beans and pie in a tin.

Chippers were a treat, not a norm.

It was about what was affordable. We bought offel in the butchers to stretch stews and soups.

Compared to now all food was expensive, so there's zero excuse for chosing bad over good.

Anorexia is also an eating disorder.

But no one makes excuses for that like they do for junk food.

Fair Post. I broadly agree with all that. It is more complicated than it seems and if you already know how to eat relative healthily, then it's very easy to overlook the learning you had to do and the time someone spent teaching you, to get that knowledge.

If I'm in a rush, I'll have eggs on toast. Grand dinner in a rush and I'll happily feed it to my child when I need to. Much cheaper and much faster than a take away. Probably fine for macronutrients but probably not great for micronutrients. And straight away it's more complicated for someone learning about these things for the first time.

I probably have more confidence than knowledge when it comes to nutrition (and i think a lot of people are in the same boat whether they know it or not). People who spend their lives studying nutrition don't agree on everything because it is complicated.

Gut health and fibre is a big topic in recent years. I heard someone on a podcast confidently say "forget fibre, fibre is for pooping". Is that true? Honestly I've no idea because I'm not an expert. But when I try to find out, I hear experts tell me to eat more fibre and forget fibre. How could it be simple for someone trying to learn how to eat healthy?

Eggs on toast are great. Even better make "green eggs". Whiz up a few eggs in the blender with 2 handfuls of spinach. Cook in on the pan like an omlette, sprinkle grated cheese on top. Serve it on wholemeal toast…..kids love it.

there was an astonishing level of trauma in pre obesity ireland, and we dealt with this by alternative addictions, primarily alcoholism, but since we now have much cheaper addictive substances, such as cheap sugary and fatty foods, we have now included this in our repertoire of addictive substances, including alcohol and other drugs of course.

again, these are not excuses but our current understanding of why humans behave as such, they are not lazy, they are not ignorant, they need specific types of help, especially therapeutic supports, as the approach of ridiculing and shaming them, like any other addict, simply will not work!

every 2nd person walking around is obese and a huge amount of kids too. Not all these people experienced trauma. Its poor eating habits and lack of exercise, overuse of screens, snacking, poor will power, laziness, not enough time spent in nature. That in itself can lead to depression.

There was no obesity at all when I was growing up, many of us (including myself) experienced disfunctional childhoods, lack of parental affection, being reared by relatives, being left alone, less mollycoddling. We weren't fat, we just ate less. We were also very resilient.

Define what you think is a healthy diet and what is a bad diet.

We've established that cost, availability and time are not obstacles to improving diet and general lifestyle.

The biggest obstacle is simply lack of interest in self improvement. Some people simply don't care and are happy with a lifestyle with no positive benefits.

I don't believe all people who are obese are so because of trauma.

I believe that's a lazy cop out to what's actually happening, which is some people simply aren't interested in being healthy. I'm had grown adults tell me they never drink water and only drink Coke, because they like the taste. They admit it's bad for them, but they don't like plain water.

Well I don't it's a trauma that has them thinking that way. It's just simple choice.

They prefer sugary drinks knowing that long term it's a diabetic lifestyle. I worked with a guy who got diagnosed with Type II diabetes around 45 years of age but rather than change his lifestyle he simply fobbed it off as the doctor was giving him meds to deal with it.

That was a personal choice to ignore all professional advice about changing the lifestyle that led to him becoming diabetic. And he wasn't in denial about it either, he just feels life is not worth living if he can't eat what he wants when he wants.

This is what I think is weird about how this thread is going, imagine the average person knowing or being interested in the stats about obesity in Ireland (unless they work in the area ) or the average person knowing about micro nutrition (unless they work in the area ) or equating eating fresh berries with health eating, it's a fad the current fad seems to be nutritionally dence food the one before that was high protein, it's peculiar to think so much about food.