Food Behaviours: Healthy Eating on the island of Ireland

In the past, safefood’s consumer focused reviews (CFRs) have focused on key food chains including chicken, finfish, fruit and vegetables, milk, beef and pork. The reviews aimed to address consumer concerns surrounding food safety, production methods and nutritional issues related to key foods, with a view to communicating directly to consumers on those issues. More recently, there has been a shift in emphasis by safefood to address broader issues of consumer concern, such as food origin. The aim of the current CFR is different from previous reports. Instead of addressing key consumer food concerns, it focuses on understanding consumer food behaviour. Its primary aim is to inform the research, policies and practices of all those working towards changing consumer food safety and dietary behaviour on the island of Ireland and to ensure that communication with consumers is both evidence-based and effective.

Burden of Disease: Environmental Inequalities

A report on Environmental Inequalities in the UK. Part of the Burden of disease. A clean and healthy environment is a vital component of public health. This is particularly so for children. They are more sensitive to most stressors during development and growth and receive relatively more exposure than adults due to behaviour patterns, lack of awareness, size and biological metabolisms.A study of the contribution of environmental pollutants to the incidence, prevalence, mortality and costs of four categories of paediatric disease in American children estimated total annual costs to be $54.9 billion comprising $43.4 billion for lead poisoning, $2.0 billion for asthma, $0.3 billion for childhood cancer, and $9.2 billion for neurobehavioral disorders; 2.8 % of total U.S. health care costs. As well as childhood conditions, some adult diseases, even those that emerge much later in life, e.g. hypertension, hyperlipidemia, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, ischemic heart disease, breast cancer and prostate cancer have some of their origins in utero and childhood. Childhood exposures to environmental health hazards may therefore constitute a source of inequity between generations .

Consumer Focused Review of Men's Food Behaviour

Increasing attention has been paid to the burden of ill-health experienced by men in many Western countries. In Europe and internationally, the Republic of Ireland has been leading the way by developing a national policy for men’s health. In most countries around the world, women now have a longer life expectancy than men. Similarly, on the island of Ireland, in spite of recent increases in men’s life expectancy, men continue to have higher death rates at all ages and from all leading causes of death. In Northern Ireland, in 2010, men’s life expectancy at birth was 77.08 years (81.53 years for women), while in the Republic of Ireland, figures published in 2009 revealed that men’s life expectancy at birth was 76.8 years (compared to 81.6 years for women). Key health issues for men include circulatory diseases, cancers and respiratory diseases. In relation to food and health, obesity has been highlighted as a major concern in relation to men’s health. While physiological difference between men and women explain some of the variation in the rate and/or onset of disease (e.g., protective effects of oestrogen in relation to the onset of cardiovascular diseases), other factors, such as socio-cultural influences, which are the main focus of this report, also play an important role. It is acknowledged that men and women experience different influences and motivations with respect to their knowledge and attitudes of and behaviours towards food and health. The purpose of this report is therefore not to compare men with women or to encourage men to model themselves on women in relation to their food and health behaviour. Rather, the goal is to provide recommendations to improve communications, resources, interventions, education and services targeted at boys and men in relation to food.