MEXICO CITY – During an excursion of the southern month of the state of Chiapas, the Mexican tsar of the coronavirus addressed a vice he considers guilty of the country’s pandemic problems: the rampant consumption of sodas.
According to one study, Health Undersecretary Hugo López-Gatell attempted to link soft drink intake with COVID-19 deaths, accusing sugar of causing comorities such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, non-unusual diseases in Mexico, where just three -a quarter of the population is overweight. Organization for economic cooperation 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 and death toll soar, Mexico only follows Brazil and the United States in terms of deaths due to the pandemic, Lopez-Gatell and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador have connected Mexico’s pandemic disorders with their misconduct when eating – soda intake in mind.
Mexicans drink more sodas in proportion to the capita than any other country: about 163 liters a year. Bottlers like Coca-Cola deliver products to remote corners of the country, where drinking water is scarce and soft drinks are sold for less than water.
The use of a mask was questioned through López-Gatell and Lupez Obrador, but expressed fewer doubts about the negative effect of junk food and soft drinks and their 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 administrations,” said López-Gatell, who said sugary beverage intake caused 40,000 deaths a year in Mexico. “With products that cause harm, we want to discourage their consumption so that fewer people are poorly healthy.”
He’s been criticized for his handling of the pandemic. He widely verified the coronavirus or conducted a tactile investigation, and the death toll was expanded to 60,000.
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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. He referred favourably to families acting as a social safety net than to strong economic assistance programmes.
“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 that sugary drinks contribute to weight gain and obesity in Mexico is not new.”
The Mexican beverage industry has responded to the city, saying Mexicans consume less than 6% of their calories from sugary drinks.
Public aptitude advocates have said the punishment of big refreshments was long ago. 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 measure this month and federal lawmakers raised the option of a national ban on the sale of junk food to children, causing COVID-19 headaches.
From October on, large labels appear on products that contain gigantic amounts of sugar, salt, calories, or saturated fats.
“There was already a pandemic, and it caught our attention and we said that other people are dying,” said Alejandro Calvillo, director of El Poder del Consumidor, 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 of the state of Guerrero 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 calorie-rich snacks in 2014 as part of a tax program. The 1 peso tax consistent with the liter (about five cents) reduced soft drink intake by 6% in 2015 and 7.5% in 2016, according to Juan Rivera Dommarco, director general of The National Institute of Public Health of Mexico.
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 disputed through the owners of Mexico’s ubiquitous retailers, who said that others prioritize sugary drinks over other purchases.
“The comfortable beverage intake behavior 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 stores.
“You don’t have to eat nutrition (healthy) or better,” he said, and small investors have sodas for 25% of sales.
In the district of Xochimilco, in southern Mexico City, affected by cases of COVID-19, citizens who bought soft drinks talked about the dangers and the difficulty of getting rid of this habit.
“It’s like an addiction. Although we know it’s hurting, we’re still eating it,” government worker Victor Martinez Alvarado said after buying a 3-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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