Are Irish people fat? If so why?

The Irish mammy is to blame, simple as that really.

Actually I would have said it seems to be getting better after 15 years of it getting steadily worse.

It was very Celtic Tiger to have an expensive gym membership that you never used, and a cheap takeaway that you always used. Not to mention eating out twice a week and going for a rake of pints on the weekend.

There are more people getting into sports than I've ever seen before, particularly high-cardio sports like running, football and cycling.

Leftist wrote: »

Is it the bread? lack of an outdoor culture?

It seems to be getting worse. We're more american than european in this aspect imo.

Nope, still closer to European - in fact about average for Europe.

Now the Greeks and British, they're getting American-sized:

www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

There's less Irish doing hard labour these days. During the Celtic Tiger, most tough menial tasks were given to the Polish. Have you ever seen a fat Polish person??
The Irish got lazy.

Leftist wrote: »

Good points well made. Although the high-cardio exercise is almost neccesary in order to keep your weight down. That is not natural imo.

IT has to be the food and bread.

I don't know why people are singling out bread all of sudden. Bread is food like any other. The problem is that almost everything tastes awesome on bread, so we eat too much of it. But bread is fine.

The thing about getting into exercise/sports is that you very quickly realise that your excess weight is making it twice as hard as it needs to be. So getting into a sport inevitably leads one to improve their diet too. I don't think it's so much that people are exercising to offset their excessive eating, because that doesn't really work.

Leftist wrote: »

You leave a city and people start getting very round.

You really are getting tedious at this stage!

flyswatter wrote: »

We're the second most obese country in the world at the moment.

Proof please? Link?????

seamus wrote: »

I don't know why people are singling out bread all of sudden. Bread is food like any other. The problem is that almost everything tastes awesome on bread, so we eat too much of it. But bread is fine.

True, eating a loaf of bread a day will make you fat, eating a slice of bread a day will not.

flyswatter wrote: »

www.thejournal.ie/readme/column-feeling-unhealthy-it-could-be-what-youre-eating/

I'm afraid that article contains a single uncited declaration that Ireland is the second most obese nation in the world. So you can be forgiven for taking it at face value, but that wouldn't constitute "proof", especially since the article was written by someone working for a company who provides weight-related counselling and assistance.

The last piece of "real" data we have comes from 2007, when 23% of Irish adults were obese.
http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,2340,en_2649_34631_2085200_1_1_1_1,00.html (that's the latest OECD data, but Ireland is only measured up to 2007)

That doesn't put us second, but it certainly does put us in the top tier, on a par with the UK. It's also significantly above the world average of 9.8%

It's worth noting that if you look at the WHO figures, we're relatively far down the table, 20-somethingth place. But this is only because it includes small poor island nations, some of whom have obesity rates above 70%.

There are two things that stick out for me about the OECD table I link above:

1. Most countries aren't making any serious effort to keep track of their nations' health. Only five countries are tracking obesity on anything approaching a regular basis.
2. In 2007, the Irish obesity rate was measured at 23%. When asked to self-report, only 15% of people in that same year reported being overweight. Which means that about a third of people are either unaware that they're obese or in denial about it.