Radio Netherlands Worldwide November 11, 2012
“It is a strange drink because it’s black. I like it more than other soft drinks”, says a teenager in a fast food restaurant in Mexico City, sipping from a cola drink. A girl next to him says: “The very first thing I do when I get up in the morning is take a soda from the fridge”.
Mexico is the world’s fattest country. Figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that more Mexicans are obese than in any other country. Consumption of soda and carbonated drinks, together with fast food, are a major contributing factor in this growing obesity epidemic.
The numbers are terrifying. According to Alejandro Calviño, president of ‘El Poder del Consumidor’ (The Power of the Consumer), “excess weight and obesity are the cause of the most prevalent life-threatening diseases in Mexico”. An estimated 70% of Mexican adults are overweight or obese - one in three women and one in men. Mexico is also the country with the highest number of children between 5 and 11 years who are overweight.
“It is not a problem of aesthetics; it's a problem of public health because the death rate as a consequence of diabetes is 80 per 100.000 inhabitants. This causes very high costs that the Government is not able to deal with”, says Calviño. Read more.
The MexicoBlog of the Americas Program, a fiscally sponsored program of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), is written by Laura Carlsen. I monitor and analyze international press on Mexico, with a focus on security, immigration, human rights and social movements for peace and justice, from a feminist perspective. And sometimes I simply muse.
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