Eat Smart Week, a food industry initiative, aims to make healthy eating a 'hedonistic pleasure', writes Paul Cullen
When it comes to the eating habits of the Irish, the words of St Augustine come to mind - O Lord make me virtuous but not just yet. We've heard all the health warnings, we know we've fallen into bad habits, but we constantly put making changes in our diet on the long finger. Many of us live by a kind of "manana principle", where we are one drink away from a detox, one doughnut away from a new diet, a month away from a new regime.
Yet as we continue to snack and graze, the figures on our expanding figures grow more alarming. Obesity is becoming an epidemic, in Ireland as much as anywhere in the Western world, and it is affecting people at an ever earlier age. By 2010, for example, almost 40 per cent of children in the EU will be obese or overweight.
Throughout the EU, 23 million people now have type two diabetes, mostly in the early-onset form that is linked to obesity. Each year, 1.9 million people die of cardiovascular disease, often linked to lifestyle issues, particularly diet. And almost four million bones are fractured as our bodies groan under their loads.
Not the sort of message you might want to hear while cooking up your fry on a Saturday morning. For years, too, the warnings of health professionals have fallen on deaf ears. Politicians weren't interested - the Government set up a taskforce on obesity, then ignored most of its recommendations after the report was published two years ago - and the food industry pressed ahead blithely with new high-fat, high-sugar and high-salt products.
All that is changing. The massive cost of this health problem - €169 billion a year in the case of cardiovascular disease and €32 million for osteoporotic fractures - has spurred politicians to start threatening major changes. Consumers are becoming more health conscious, and this is encouraging greater efforts by the food industry to take some of the bad stuff out of its products. It helps that in an otherwise static business, healthy products are showing serious growth.
In Ireland, realising that change is on the way, the main players in the food and drink industry have set up the Nutrition and Health Foundation, in which they have joined with government departments and university nutritionists in promoting healthier eating. You wouldn't normally associate the likes of McDonalds and Coca Cola, both among the industry members of NHF, with healthy eating initiatives, but the foundation has pursued a number of worthwhile initiatives. The latest is Eat Smart Week, designed to show that eating healthily needn't be as dreary as it sometimes sounds. Chef Derry Clarke has been enlisted to cook up simple, nutritious meals and to show "the hedonistic pleasure of eating properly".
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DERRY CLARKE'S STEAMED IRISH SALMON, WHIPPED PEA & GARLIC PUREE
Serves four
1 peeled and chopped carrot
1 peeled and chopped onion
1 peeled and chopped stick of celery
1 pint water
1 bunch rosemary
1 glass white wine
4 6oz salmon fillets (skinned)
4 sticks of lemongrass
1 small packet of garden peas
2 cloves of garlic (crushed)
Milk
Put the water, wine, chopped veg and rosemary in the bottom half of a steaming saucepot. If you don't have one of these, use a folding steamer insert. Place the pot on the heat until the liquid is simmering. Skewer the salmon with lemongrass sticks and place in top half of the saucepot, cover and steam until cooked (five to seven minutes).
For the pea and garlic puree, cook the peas until tender, then drain them and add the crushed garlic. Season and add a little milk. Mash until smooth.
SAFFRON ROASTED PEPPERS
1 tsp saffron strands
2 red peppers
1 bulb of fresh ginger, peeled
1 clove of garlic, peeled
2 peeled shallots
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp sunflower oil
fresh herbs, to taste
Half and deseed the peppers, and grill them under a hot grill until blackened. Cool, skin and slice the peppers. Heat the olive and sunflower oils in a saucepan. Add the ginger, garlic, shallot and saffron. Cook until soft, then season and allow to cool. Add peppers and chopped herbs of your choice. To serve, place the pea mash on the plate, then the salmon, and spoon saffron and peppers over the top.
NUTRITIONAL ANALYSIS
Each serving contains 484 calories; 25.5g fat; 4.2g saturated fat