Minister for Red Herrings

7th Feb 2012

The Minster for Health, ironically firmly among the overweight himself, has pulled another typically Irish move in the pretend war on obesity by producing another juicy succulent red herring to set tubby tongues and flabby fingers wagging. 

Instead of being direct and telling Irish people that they are eating too much bad food he has decided to point the finger at restaurants and other outlets instead - now compelling them to display the amount of calories each of their meals contains.

Cork's Jerry Buttimer with the Minister who has responsibility for obesity

If they don’t do it voluntarily Reilly proclaimed boisterously that he will bring in legislation to force them to do it.

This is a classic Irish solution to an Irish problem.

Aside from how silly restaurant menus will look with loads of numbers listed on them and the logistical nightmare it will cause already struggling business owners every time they slightly alter their menus we all know that Irish people are not fat because they don’t know how many calories are in the pepperoni pizza they’ve ordered or the enormous steak plopped up in front of them at a restaurant.

Aoife couldn't work out why she was getting bigger.

They are increasing in size because they are eating too much bad food and not exercising enough.

There’s no political capital in telling people to get out and run around a bit more and no election campaign will ever be built on telling people to eat fruit and veg instead of burgers and chips. The votes are in creating the image of an evil restaurant industry that the government can pretend to do something about.

It’s like blaming dogs for the state of the city’s streets instead of the owners that pretend to be cloud watching while their muts decorate the footpaths.

Next, let's blame the internet

Look at the cigarette industry in this country which operates in a ‘dark market’ where they are not allowed to advertise. Fag boxes have huge displays on them saying that smokers are likely to die in excruciating pain yet nearly a quarter of the population still smokes and there is no credible research to show that it has any effect on youth smoking.

A few numbers on menus won’t change a thing.

Castigating restaurants reminds us of the Thierry Henry handball incident. As The Boy said, ‘the ball bounced in the six yard box from a free just inside the half way line’ – a hanging offence for any professional defender. Instead we did the Irish thing and blamed the cheating frog.   

And then blame measuring tapes

Although Dr. James Reilly certainly doesn’t need to be encouraged to eat anything extra, he’d be better off eating his own words along with his red herring and get more direct with the plumper part of the population: Get out more, exercise regularly and stop eating rubbish food.

If people don’t like being told the truth they’ll just have to, as Dr. Roy Keane would say, ‘get over it’.