MEXICO CITY – During an excursion to the southern state of Chiapas last month, the Mexican tsar of the coronavirus attacked a local vice that he believes is for the country’s ongoing pandemic problems: the endemic intake of Coca-Cola.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
“Why do we want poison bottled into comfortable drinks?” Lopez-Gatell asked. “Health in Mexico would be quite another if we stopped fooling ourselves with those lifestyles that are sold on television and heard on the radio and that we see in the ads, as if it were happiness.”
As COVID-19 cases in Mexico increase and the death toll soars, Mexico is only behind Brazil and the United States in terms of deaths due to a widespread pandemic, Lopez-Gatell and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador have pointed to Mexico’s pandemic disorders at their most bad point. Gastronomic behavior: leader in consumption of soft drinks among them.
Mexicans drink more sodas in proportion to the capita than any other country: about 163 liters a year. And bottlers like Coca-Cola deliver their products to remote corners of the country, where drinking water is scarce and soft drinks are sold for less than water.
The use of mask is questioned through Lupez-Gatell and Lupez Obrador. But they expressed fewer doubts about the negative effect of junk food and soft drink intake and its relationship to COVID-19 deaths.
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“The evidence is very clear, however, there are many interests, which have led to data concealment in other (past) administrations,” said Lopez-Gatell, who also stated that the intake of sugary drinks killed another 40,000 people a year in Mexico “With products that cause harm, we want to discourage their consumption so that fewer people are undereserved.”
Attacks on giant soft drinks and warnings of more meals occur at a time when Lopez-Gatell has been criticized for his handling of the pandemic, specifically a policy of conducting thorough testing and seeking contacts, while the death toll ends in 60,000 deaths.
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Meanwhile, Obrador has sold self-help lists as the pandemic worsens, with recommendations such as eating a “traditional diet” of corn, rice and beans, avoiding consumerism, and locating spirituality. And he spoke favorably of families acting as a social safety net that pronounced strong economic assistance programs.
“Dr. Lupez-Gatell has to adopt a new strategy: locate scapegoats,” said Malaquias López-Cervantes, professor of public aptitude at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “It’s an excuse because the fact is that sugary drinks contribute to weight gain and obesity in Mexico is nothing new.”
The Mexican beverage industry has retaliated on Lopez-Gatell, claiming that Mexicans consume less than 6% of their calories from sugary drinks and claiming that their comments “show the willingness to locate a public enemy to blame for the fitness crisis facing the country because of Covid19’s pandemic.”
Public aptitude advocates, however, have long called for the punishment of large fizzy drinks. And some states must act.
The southern state of Oaxaca this month approved the ban on promoting soft drinks and sugary snacks among children. Tabasco state approved a move this month and federal lawmakers raised the option of passing a national ban on the sale of junk food to children, causing COVID-19 headaches.
Large labels appear on products that contain gigantic amounts of sugar, salt, calories, or saturated fats starting in October.
“There is already a pandemic and it caught our attention saying, “Other people are dying,” said Alejandro Calvillo, director of The Consumer Power, a client and critical organization in Mexico’s beverage industry.
The soft drink habit starts young in Mexico. A survey conducted through The Consumer Power in a marginalized corner of Guerrero state found that 70% of young people feed on soft drinks for breakfast; 70% of young people reported drinking soft drinks at least 3 times the day before.
“What moves me is seeing others at 7 a.m. poisoning himself for drinking Coca-Cola,” said Pedro Arriaga, a Jesuit priest from the Chiapas countryside.
Beverage corporations are among Mexico’s leading advertisers and political lobbyists. Calvillo and other advocates of a tax on sugary drinks have been among the targets of an espionage campaign, in which spyware has been surreptitiously installed on their smartphones. (The government and the beverage industry have denied any involvement in espionage.)
Mexico imposed a tax on sugary drinks and high-calorie snacks in 2014 following tax reform. According to Juan Rivera Dommarco, director general of the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico, the 1 peso consistent with the tax per liter (about five cents) reduced the intake of soft drinks by 6% in 2015 and by 7.5% in 2016.
However, the cash raised through the tax was not paid to public fitness as promised or paid for the installation of fountains in ramshackle schools, which lack running water, according to Calvillo.
The effect of the comfortable beverage tax is also disputed through the owners of Mexico’s ubiquitous retailers, who say that other people only prioritize sugary drinks over other purchases.
“The consumption behavior of soft drinks corresponds to the poverty and economic desires of the country,” said Cuauhtémoc Rivera, director of the National Alliance of Small Merchants, Anpec, which represents thousands of family-owned shops.
“You don’t have to consume nutrition (healthy) or better,” he said, adding that small investors have sodas for 25% of sales.
In the district of Xochimilco, south of Mexico City, affected by coVID-19 cases, citizens who bought soft drinks talked about possible dangers and difficulties in getting rid of this habit.
“It’s like an addiction, even though we know it’s hurt, we’re still eating it,” government employee Victor Martinez Alvarado said after buying a three-litre bottle of sugar-free Coke. “They say sugar-free doesn’t hurt, but I think it’s the same thing. He does the same damage.
“I am aware as a customer that this is causing damage,” said David González Flores, a worker in the structure, between two sips of Coca-Cola. “But that’s all I like.”
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