Every January, a familiar ritual unfolds. Millions of us, spurred by the guilt of holiday excess and the shiny promise of a “new year, new you”, commit to radical lifestyle overhauls.
We replace indulgence with good intentions, and resolve to get off the couch, exercise and eat healthily. Out with the takeaways, in with the “fibermaxxing”, fermented cabbage and cold water swimming.
For many of us, the same intentions tend to resurface every January. But, as the glut of self-help books, apps, classes and coaches suggest, we find change really hard to get off the ground and harder still to maintain. Perhaps it’s time to think about why our habits need changing in the first place, and what has caused us to develop bad eating patterns or sedentary lifestyles.
A healthy lifestyle is not just a personal project: health – and its absence – are products of social conditions and public policies. Our body movement and food behaviours are shaped by our physical environment, advertising and the food industry to a far greater extent than we realise.
The trends are alarming: levels of overweight and obesity in Ireland have doubled in the past two decades among adults, and one in five children are overweight or obese. Only 40 per cent of the Irish population has a healthy weight. While body weight is just one health indicator of many, it points to the ubiquity of ultra-processed foods, and a rising incidence of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Meanwhile, 70 per cent of all trips are taken by car in Ireland, even though 30 per cent of trips are less than 2km.
The planetary health diet attracted criticism in some quarters for its emphasis on reducing animal-source foods, but it is not a vegan diet
Even with the advent of weight-loss medications, individuals forced by circumstances and bad planning into unhealthy sedentary lifestyles bear a significant personal cost – not to mention the public cost. There are many complex factors behind every individual story.
But we need to connect the obesity epidemic to the pervasive influence of the food and livestock industry, poor land-use planning and the lack of safe walking and cycling infrastructure and public transport.
We’ve designed a world in which children are limited in the extent they can safely walk, cycle or use public transport. Just 24 per cent of national schoolchildren walk or cycle to school.
Only one in 250 Irish girls cycled to school in 2022, compared with a figure of 75 per cent of all teenagers in the Netherlands, which also boasts the number one ranking for children’s mental health in a 2025 Unicef report on child wellbeing.
Our food systems are also in bad shape. In most urban neighbourhoods there is a dearth of options to buy affordable, fresh, healthy food. Many areas have become food “swamps” with fast food outlets, betting shops and off licences dominating the streetscape. It is no wonder that we give in so easily to the various temptations.
Climate change and the unprecedented habitat loss driven by agriculture means that we need to make changes. We need a dietary shift away from excessive consumption of red meat and dairy towards a diet rich in plant-based proteins, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains similar to what the EAT-Lancet commission – a collaboration between the international non-profit EAT and The Lancet group, publisher of the medical journal – called the planetary health diet.
This is a diet based on human health, not exclusively on environmental criteria, but proponents say it can reduce the environmental impacts and nutritional deficiencies of most current diets. It represents a more efficient use of agricultural land and reduces climate and water impacts. It is also broadly accepted to be better for your health than diets heavily reliant on meat and dairy.
The planetary health diet attracted criticism in some quarters for its emphasis on reducing animal-source foods, but it is not a vegan diet: it can include small portions of meat, fish and dairy produce as part of a nutritionally balanced diet that is capable of feeding the world’s population.
Irish researchers calculated in 2023 that the current Irish diet’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) exceed planetary boundaries by a staggering 226 per cent. Almost half of Ireland’s dietary GHG emissions come from animal food products, with red meat being the largest contributor. And over 80 per cent of our fruit and vegetables are imported.
Our health, food and environment agencies should be actively promoting a plant-based diet for health and environmental reasons. They should be reforming our food systems to reflect these goals. But efforts to promote them are anaemic at best. The Department of Health and the HSE continue to recommend dietary intakes of dairy and red meat that above the recommendations of the planetary health diet.
Instead of starting a new fad diet, reduce your meat and dairy intake, support local organic growers and farmers’ markets, or join a community garden project.
Add your voice to the campaigns for allotments, social supermarkets and bike lanes. Join a Park Run instead of the gym. Be the change you want to see in the world – instead of watching it from the sofa.
Sadhbh O’Neill is a climate and environmental researcher
