03 Feb 2016 The Mexicans dying for a fizzy drink
Mexicans consume more carbonated drinks per person than any other nation, and the country has one of the world’s highest rates of childhood obesity. Two years ago the government introduced a tax on sugary drinks – but is it working?
Silvia Segura lives in a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Merida, in Mexico’s Yucatan state. She invites us into her modest house. Three armchairs face a television and a ghetto-blaster turned up high with Mexican music blaring out.
On the walls are hooks with hammocks hanging from them. These are where the family sleeps – they are more comfortable than beds in the region’s baking climate.
In the living room, however, a double bed stands in the middle of the floor. Silvia says this was her mother’s bed after she became too ill to climb into a hammock. She died recently because of complications caused by type 2 diabetes – but until the end, Silvia says, her appetite for sugary drinks never left her.
“All my family drinks Coca-Cola,” says Silvia. “My mother, may she rest in peace, was a true cocacolera – she couldn’t live without it, she’d drink it three times a day if she could. She said it kept her alive.”
When her mother went into hospital, “we’d smuggle the coke in and give her some sips,” Silvia says.
Mexicans are the thirstiest consumers of sugary drinks in the world. Each gets through an estimated 163 litres (36 imperial gallons) on average per person every year – 40% more than an average American (who drinks 118 litres, or 26 gallons).
And this, says the government and the health campaigners, is a serious problem.
All too often, the headlines coming from Mexico focus on the country’s bloody drugs war – which has claimed over 100,000 lives in the past decade. Type 2 diabetes, on the other hand, kills 70,000 per year.
So acute is the problem that two years ago, in January 2014, Mexico introduced a national tax on sugary drinks and junk food – a 10% tax on every litre of sugar-sweetened drinks and an 8% tax on high-calorie food.
The effect of these on children is a particular concern – according to Mexico’s Health Ministry, the country leads the world in childhood obesity.
“About 10% of kids are being fed soda from zero to six months of age,” says Dr Salvador Villalpando, a childhood obesity specialist at the Federico Gomez children’s hospital in Mexico City.
“By the time they reach two it’s about 80%.”
The problem is aggravated by the fact that children are often short, their development sometimes hindered both physically and mentally by a diet high in junk food and low in nutrients.
Although the country’s appetite for sugary drinks has sometimes been put down to the lack of clean water in some parts of the country, Villalpando disagrees.
“It’s cultural,” he says.
“Mexican mums like having chubby kids in their homes as it shows they’re feeding them properly. And they are so used to feeding them sodas, they don’t stop even when there is clean water.”
The children coming to his clinic often show early signs of diabetes – patches of dark skin on their necks and regular spikes in their blood sugar levels. Children with pre-diabetes cannot process sugar in the same way as healthy children and after consuming sugary food or drink their blood sugar rises dramatically.
According to research by Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health, together with the University of North Carolina, in the first year the tax reduced consumption of sugary drinks by an average of 6% over the 12 months, reaching 12% by the month of December.
In the poorest households, monthly purchases of sweet drinks fell by a full 17%.
The drinks industry disputes these figures, however.
“We did an analysis with the National Institute of Statistics and Geography and what we have, until June 2015, is that consumption and sales have been affected by 1% or 2%,” says Jorge Terrazas of Mexico’s bottled drinks industry body, Anprac.
He adds that fizzy drinks only account for 5.6% of Mexico’s average calorie consumption so can only be a small part of the solution to obesity and diabetes……