Friday Feedback: Should Nation Be Sweet on a Soda Tax? | Medpage Today
Canada has used Tobacco Taxation and legislative tools to address Tobacco usage . Paul Murphy
Tuesday, 31 May 2016
Friday, 27 May 2016
Health Digest- May 2016 Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity
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Wednesday, 25 May 2016
Tuesday, 24 May 2016
Coffee and Tea Dr Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan Speaks About Coffee And Tea
0:04
coffee in TR also plant drugs and we
don't think I've them that way we tend
0:09
not to use the word drug when its normal
0:11
calm but alcohol coffee and tea are drug
0:14
om and arm coffee in TV
0:18
we we've been using them for very long
time
0:21
they've been acceptable for a very long
time but not always
0:25
arm and they were I
0:28
coffee we believe was discovered with
the help of goats
0:33
on Abbas in Ian herders goat herders
notice that their goats go through the
0:39
great experimenters in nature they want
is nibble a little bit of everything to
0:42
see what happens
0:43
hom they would notice the particularly
like the berries have a particular bush
0:47
and that led the herders supposedly
0:51
Tom to experiment and discover that in
those berries with the seat and then a
0:56
few
0:57
consume that seed specially after
roasting you would
1:01
feel really good very alert
1:04
I would sharpen your senses but you
would feel different differently than
1:09
you did before
1:10
om t very similarly the changes your
mood
1:14
I am and why is this well and case
1:17
coffee and tea we think it's caffeine a
compound that they both
1:22
contain although the experience coffee
and he is very different and can't
1:25
simply be explained by
1:27
by levels of caffeine like most to the
substance is too many drugs involved and
1:31
we tend to focus on that one
1:33
active ingredient per to maybe a great
many compounds that are affecting the
1:36
experience
1:37
so there's an example have two drugs
that are
1:40
culture celebrates and some people would
argue that
1:45
the drugs that our culture chooses to
celebrate are the ones that kind of
1:49
hopes it function most smoothly
1:53
so for example I coffee and tea became
acceptable during the Industrial
1:59
Revolution
2:00
these were good drugs to take if you had
to
2:04
work a really long day in here in a
factory needed to stay alert
2:08
they did not impede the wheels of
capitalism
2:12
you now in fact they be lubricated that
we also capitalism
2:16
cigarettes 22 I tobacco another
2:19
another plan to a I am in yet there are
other drugs that get in the way
2:25
save the smooth workings have capitalist
economy
2:30
and marijuana would be one people don't
really see the need to work
2:34
it diminishes the the
2:38
ambition drive and makes people content
with what the hack harm
2:43
so that maybe one other reasons that in
our very fast
2:47
achievement oriented society
2:51
marijuana has been demonized
Comments • 176
Lose 50 Pounds by Dr Sharma CON
I have added this , but it does not reflect my vision and my position. I focus on the countless factors that influence the food environment. Paul Murphy
Monday, 23 May 2016
The “Coca-Colization” of Mexico, the Spark of Obesity
05.03.2013
Special
thanks to – María
Verza and periodismo humano .
María Verza (Chiapas, Mexico)
( Translation by: A.L.C. Teen Translators –
Asturias, Spain)
- Mexico is the country that consumes more soft drinks per person in the world and Chiapas one of the places where not only the most is drunk but also where malnutrition and obesity prevail.
- Experts warn, with 70% of Mexicans overweight, 30% of them obese, and diabetes the primary cause of death, that the health system will collapse by 2020.
- Any hopes? That Congress passes the initiative supported by The UN and 47 other organizations to increase beverage company taxes and that The PRI´s current “Crusade Against Hunger” is taken into account.
[A
road-sign marking the way to YITIC, in the Altos de Chiapas (Maria Verza)]
It´s a
festival day in the Altos de Chiapas, the mountain range that surrounds San
Cristóbal de las Casas. San Pedro Chenalhó´s school is the center of activities
because they have a large gymnasium that converts into a multiple-use meeting
area. Regardless of the celebration, or the village participating, this scene
invariably repeats itself. It´s ten o´clock in the morning and the number of
cases of Coca-Cola that are piled up at the doorway is astounding. The audience
settles in early getting good seats to watch their children´s performances.
Various volunteers proceed to open and offer soft drinks, which thanks to the
City Hall are usually the largest size available in the city, and everybody
grabs one. The only requirement is that you are able to finish the half-liter
bottles which often seem bigger than the children that are holding them. Of
course if not, there´s another option: their mothers can either hold the bottle
or pour it into a baby bottle to make it easier to drink.
San Pedro
Chenalhó (M.V)
Next,
some little kids go to center court where they dance around the Coca-Cola brand
symbol drawn on the floor. If an extra-terrestrial arrived at this moment,
surely they would think that Coke was something very important to the
earthlings. Everyone is pleased that a woman is offering some cookies to
accompany their soft drinks between performances. All the children are doing
very well and today they will save their lunches, something important in a
region where poverty affects eight out of ten people and malnutrition and
hunger three out of ten.
The
school in San Pedro Chenalhó is on the road that joins San Cristóbal de Las
Casas with Pantelho, a bit further than 60 kilometers from the colonial city.
During the trip, the red and white colors stand out against the green mountain
landscape. Almost all the shops, but not the normal houses, are painted in
these colors because this way the paint is free. Coca-Cola Femsa (the Mexican
subsidiary that is Coca-Cola´s largest bottling plant in the world, with 2.6
billion cases produced in 2011 and which supplies all Latin America) knows that
these indigenous and impoverished areas are an important market. Femsa opts for
advertisements in native languages and have changed over the traditional
welcoming billboards to villages into large publicity posters.
Ctra S
Cristobal Pantelhó (M.V.)
The
strategy comes from afar. As the social anthropologist Jaime Page Pliego
explains, in research about to be published in the magazine, Liminar,
soft drink companies looked for local party leaders who had been supported by
the PRI and who were in charge of pox production (a type of clear
brandy made from sugar cane and used in Mayan ceremonies) and gave them
exclusivity for Coke and Pepsi. Soon they became rich. Page Pliego cites the
example of the Lopez Tuxum family from San Juan Chamula – a village today known
for a large Syncretist Church where Mayan ceremonies take place in front of its
altars of various virgins and saints. This family was offered the exclusive
selling rights in 1962 to both brands and later both companies wanted the sole
rights which Coca-Cola ended up winning. The Lopez Tuxums established
themselves as money-lenders, controlled all transportation, and handed down the
businesses from one generation to another. “The social prestige that Coke and
Pepsi acquired in Chamula, primarily for Coke, at the family festivities and
patron events, spread all over the Altos de Chiapas”, writes Page.
Little by
little these refreshments have become an important focus for the communities of
los Altos. Nowadays, it´s not only a beverage but rather almost a currency to
pay debts or dowries and in fact even part of Prehispanic ceremonies and
religious rituals. Since Evangelical churches have proliferated in the area
they have also encouraged the local natives to replace their alcoholic drink pox
with Coke or other sodas.
Ctra S
Cristobal Pantelhó (M.V.)
2-5
LITERS PER PERSON PER DAY
Mexico is
the country where the most soft drinks are consumed worldwide and Coca-Cola
Femsa are the leaders. When the heat bears down in some villages of northern
Mexico´s Sonora Desert, a person can drink up to five liters of Coke, according
to Page Pliego´s data. The average in the country, his research found, stands
at 0.4 liters daily per Mexican, a figure that multiplies in Chiapas. In los
Altos, each inhabitant drinks 2.25 liters daily and is the reason why the
bottles there are extra-large and not sold anywhere else.
The
Coca-Cola Femsa bottling plant in San Cristóbal de las Casas is, furthermore,
one of the two largest in Mexico (the other is in Tlaxcala, near the capital)
with guaranteed water access since it´s situated on the slopes of the Huitepec,
known as the “volcano of water”. Page Pliego says that besides the actual well,
which is used to supply all Chiapas and part of Oaxaca and Tabasco, another is
being built. Various organizations have denounced agreementsbetween the company
and officials for being able to access the water at a very low cost in a state
where having rights to this resource causes major legal problems among
communities.
Ctra S
Cristóbal Pantelhó (M.V.)
That´s
why Chiapas is the best example of what has become known as
“Coca-Colization”,or the invasion of the soft drinks. While maybe not the only
cause of what experts term as “the new war of the twenty-first century” or the
obesity epidemic, it is clearly one of the main reasons why in Mexico,
according to expert studies, 70% of the population is overweight and 30% of
them are obese.
Yet for
UN Food Program spokesperson Oliver de Schutter, the point where a marked
change in the Mexicans´ food habits and also an increase in sugar and processed
fats intake occurred, is when on the first of January 1994 The North American
Free Trade Act was signed. Food imports soared and, in just a decade, Coke
consumption doubled among children, according to Schutter.
School in
Yitic (M.V.)
SOFT
DRINKS + MALNOURISHMENT= ALARM
In
Chiapas this makes for an explosive combination: high soft drink consumption
and high levels of malnourishment. “Most Mexican adults were malnourished as
children, so their bodies are programmed for less and when suddenly there is an
excess of sugar the metabolic damage is terrible” explains Dr. Abelardo Avila,
researcher for The National Institute for Health and Nutrition. The
consequences range from diabetes to heart-disease, blindness, amputations and
lower work output.
According
to the 2012 Health and Nutrition Survey, diabetes is the primary cause of death
in the country, with an estimated 13 million affected and only half diagnosed
and treated. This survey found that 70% of households demonstrated some level
of food imbalance.
Nutritionist
Marisol Vega knows what the combination of these factors mean. She has spent
more than ten years working in several communities in los Altos de Chiapas with
university or NGO projects and has seen “how traditional diets have been
replaced by soft drinks and junk-food that is cheaper and easier to prepare”.
Zinacantan´s
Mrs. Petrona making tortillas (M.V.)
“For ten pesos (half a Euro) they
can buy a large bottle of soda for the whole family to drink for breakfast,
later another for lunch and perhaps even one more for dinner, because it´s
cheap(less than bottled water)and thirst-quenching, especially when served with
tortillas. In addition, it is also socially respected”, adds Vega. The
researcher warns of the danger that this implies in some communities where
there exists historically-inherited malnutrition. Breastfeeding is being given
up early and soft drinks are even being served to infants. The result is that
in the same family there are under-nourished children and obese adults. Not
only has the rate of diabetes shot up, but Vega warns that the problem will
multiply in the future.
CHEAPER
AND MORE ACCESSIBLE THAN WATER
“Many schools, not only in Chiapas
or Yucatan where the problem is more apparent, but also in the metropolitan
area of the Mexican capital, haven´t got drinkable water and the children
hydrate with soft drinks. This is a horrible problem”, points out Dr. Abelardo
Avila. “I have even seen mothers who fill their baby bottles with Coca-Cola”,
he adds. Also, schools have been converted into “junk-food paradises” even
though their sale has already been prohibited. You only need to go to the
schools´ entrances to see that what used to be sold inside, now has moved
outside. “Right, during a few months we couldn´t sell” – says Señora Juana
while she loads her small carriage with sweets at a centrally located school
near the capital –“ but now there´s no problem”.
Ctra S
Cristobal Pantelhó (M.V.)
All
experts agree, that although in some places like the capital anti-obesity and
some nutritional programs have been launched, in general the state has not done
enough to control the overweight epidemic and the diseases related to these
problems. With diabetes at the top, the problems have grown so much that “if
continued at the current rate, in 2020 the financial and public health damage
for México will be unsustainable, a catastrophe” predicts Dr. Ávila.
“Coca Cola and the rest of the
soft drink companies has done everything that the government has let them do”,
protests Alejandro Calvillo, Director of the NGO “The Power of the Consumer”.
On several occasions their group has denounced the excessive
permissiveness of the authorities regarding the expansion of beverage
industries who have operated with very low costs and taxes and even with unfair
practices. “We can demonstrate that agreements between Coca-Cola and
school directors from Chiapas permitted their exclusive beverage sales on
school property and that they paid them with bottles of Coke that were later
resold for their own personal gain”. Calvillo also remembers that the
relationship that this company has with the powers to be is very strong. “You
just have to recall that not long ago, from 2000 to 2006, Mexico had a
president that was the director of Coca-Cola (Vicente Fox)”.
Ctra S
Cristobal Pantelhó (M.V.)
Demands
of the civil organizations and the UN itself to alleviate the problem have been
the same for some years and they follow two directives: prohibiting soft drink
and junk-food publicity aimed at children and raising taxes on the industry.
But companies in the sector, very powerful and with double moral standards
(some, for example, support nutritional programs developed by NGOs), have
managed to skirt the measures by committing to self-regulation, stating that
the problem isn’t soft drinks or some foods but rather nutritional habits, as
Jaime Zabludovsky, President of ConMéxico and sector employer, explains.
Up for
debate, the next Mexican Congressional Sessions will answer to the demands of
47 organizations to raise the taxes on the soft drink companies and to try to
counteract the consumption of sweetened beverages. These groups also know that
it will be necessary to invest in nutritional education as much in rural areas
as in the urban ones and also to recover traditional diets with produce grown in
their own community when possible.
UN
Secretary Schutter agrees with this diagnosis. México must ”study the
possibility of levying taxes to discourage energy-rich diets, especially soft
drink consumption” he said this past March.
Mexico
should also “grant subsidies so poorer communities are able to have water,
fruit and vegetables” and work towards “agricultural and trade policies” which
have a good effect on population diet, namely, policies supporting individual
production in agricultural communities instead of imports.
As the
experts agree, this should be one of the basic objectives of the “Crusade
against Hunger“, which has just been set up by Enrique Peña Nieto’s
government with 30,000 million pesos (about 1,800 million euros) focused on 400
highly marginalized towns in the country.
Welcome
to Zinacantán 16km from San Cristobal (M.V)
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