Banning Junk Foods in
Mexico's Schools to Fight Obesity
By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY (IPS) - Consumer
organisations and experts say the
Mexican government's plan to remove junk
food from schools is a step in the right
direction in the fight against obesity
in this country, which has the highest
rate of childhood obesity in the world,
and the second highest rate for adults,
after the United States.
But "further measures are needed, like
regulating advertising aimed at
children, teaching parents to read
product labels, and promoting the
traditional Mexican diet," Alejandro
Calvillo, head of Consumer Power (EPC),
a local non-governmental organisation
(NGO), told IPS.
The ministries of education and public
health decided to take the bull by the
horns and tackle the problem of
overweight and obesity in children and
young people, starting next August when
the new school year begins.
The new regulations, which have yet to
be approved by the Federal Regulatory
Improvement Commission (COFEMER), would
ban products like soft drinks, packaged
juices, fried foods and snacks
containing more than 400 calories from
snack shops in 220,000 primary and
secondary schools.
The plan is to last three years, giving
the food industry time to review and
modify its ingredients for some 20,000
high-calorie products.
Some 4.5 million children aged five to
11 are overweight in Mexico, a disorder
of epidemic proportions that can lead to
diabetes, hypertension and heart
disease.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says
"fast food" like sweets, hamburgers,
snacks, cereals with added sugar and
similar products cause obesity, which
affects over 20 percent of the
population aged over five in Latin
America.
Eating junk food and not enough fruits
and vegetables leads to overweight or
obesity, the main risk factor, along
with a sedentary lifestyle and smoking
in adults, for non-infectious illnesses
that are the cause of 60 percent of
deaths worldwide, the WHO says.
Julieta Ponce, a nutritionist with the
Centro de Orientación Alimentaria (COA),
an NGO offering nutritional advice,
criticised the government plan for
putting such a strong emphasis on
calories, when "nutrition is more than
that."
"The plan is very poorly designed in
terms of promoting the traditional
diet," she told IPS.
Mexican television broadcasts 20,000
commercials a year targeted at children,
8,000 of which encourage consumption of
high-calorie products.
In January the government of President
Felipe Calderón launched the National
Agreement for Nutritional Health and
Strategy against overweight and obesity,
which aims to reduce the incidence of
overweight in children aged two to five,
reverse the trend toward overweight in
teenagers and slim down heavier adults.
At break times, schoolchildren consume
on average over 500 calories. The goal
is for preschool children under six to
reduce that consumption to between 217
and 240 calories, 290 calories for
primary school children aged six to 12,
and between 362 and 400 calories for
secondary school children aged 13 to 15,
according to the public health minister,
Ángel Córdova.
A 2004 study by the state National
Institute of Medical Sciences and
Nutrition (INNSZ) found that children
spend some 1.5 billion dollars a year in
school snack shops on sweets, soft
drinks and fried foods.
"It's important to change the food
habits of overweight people, which means
taking measures to introduce behavioural
changes covering the whole population.
The measures should be focused on the
diet, rather than on isolated
components," Héctor Borges, a researcher
at the INNSZ, told IPS.
Obesity treatment costs the government
more than five billion dollars a year.
By 2015, spending will rise to about 7.6
billion dollars, according to official
estimates.
Parent-teacher committees will oversee
enforcement of the new regulations, but
it is not yet clear how they will
monitor compliance or what will happen
to schools that do not abide by the
rules.
The processed food and beverages
industry opposes mandatory regulations,
and NGOs fear it may lobby COFEMER to
modify the government proposal.
"This project is an important step
forward, because schools have become
obesity factories. But no one is talking
yet about good food or healthy food,"
Calvillo said.
Products like soy milk-based juices,
powdered drinks, fruit cakes and
pastries, solid yoghurt and milk
beverages with added sugar will be
banned from school playgrounds, said
Xaviera Cabada, a Consumer Power
nutritionist who is campaigning against
junk food in conjunction with other
organisations.
"At last, parents will have the legal
means to insist these regulations are
observed. But the community should be
encouraged to play a part in school
compliance with the new rules," said
Ponce.
This year the pre-packaged food and
beverages industry will have to change
its product labelling and guarantee that
full nutritional value information is
provided, by order of the Federal
Commission for Protection against Health
Risks (FECOPRIS).
"This is a very complex scenario. We
have a large and growing health problem
which is affecting people at ever
younger ages," said Borges.
In April, the lower house of the Mexican
Congress approved reforms to the General
Law on Health, to eliminate junk food
from schools and make physical education
obligatory. These separate reforms are
now being debated in the Senate.
Local legislatures have regulated the
sale of high-fat, high-calorie foods in
school snack shops in 18 out of Mexico's
32 states. |
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