I live close to a girls secondary school and every day at lunchtime or school home time I notice the traffic is so congested in my area. I always think to myself why are these girls parents collecting them from school?

They are, at the very youngest, 12 or 13, so surely they can get the bus or walk home from school with their friends. But then I began to notice that if its not the girls been collected by their parents. Its actually a lot of them driving themselves to school. I’m all for independence and of course learning to drive. But even if our teenagers have cars should we not be encouraging them more to walk or cycle to school.

Along with this I notice so many kids queueing up at take aways, spar delis (with footlong breakfast baguettes) for their lunch breaks. How did we get to this? What is wrong? Do our kids have too much money? Do we not have the time to help them prepare lunch? Teach them about healthy food?

What are we to do? We in Ireland have one of the highest rates of child obesity in Europe and its getting worse.

Well Done Jamie Oliver on your recent award. We need you to come here!
http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html