Irish lives could be saved - if we eat like the English

Close to 4,000 deaths could have been avoided if diet had been changed

Larger Text

Print

E-mail

12 Comments

Woman chowing down on traditional British fish and chips - should the Irish eat like the British?

Photo by Google Images

Tweet

However, there are a few important things to remember when reading about this study. One is that the English diet definitely isn’t the healthiest of them all; according to Victoria Taylor, senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, “ a quarter of English adults are obese and only 30% eat their five-a-day.”

‘The English diet was not chosen as an example of a healthy diet, which it most certainly is not! At present in England we do not meet government recommendations for average consumption of salt, saturated fat and fruit and vegetables,” adds Dr. Peter Scarborough, of the Department of Public Health at Oxford University.“However, selecting the English diet as a “comparison” diet for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is useful as it allows for comparisons with a diet that is similar and – crucially – achievable.”

Another thing to keep in mind is that outside factors aside from unhealthy eating habits can also lead to unnecessary deaths. “The prevalence of smoking, alcohol consumption and physical activity levels, which are not uniform across the UK, could have an impact on incidence rates,” Dr. Scarborough admitted.

“Small improvements in dietary quality in Scotland and Northern Ireland (and, to a lesser degree, Wales) could result in substantial narrowing of health inequalities within the United Kingdom,” he concluded. “If dietary quality within Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales were equivalent to England, then we would expect there to be around 3700 fewer deaths in these countries annually.”

Print

E-mail

Tweet