Monday, January 15, 2007
By Laura Randall
On December 22, 2006, the Mexican Senate voted to
increase diabetes when it eliminated the proposed 5 percent tax on soft drinks from Mexico’s 2007 budget.
Why reject the tax?
The Chamber of Deputies voted for the soft drink
tax, but the Senate rejected it. There was intense lobbying by the Mexican sugar industry, and threats of legal action if
the tax was enacted. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said that the
tax would make soft drinks more expensive and harm poor people, who spend more on soft drinks than on beans. An average Mexican
consumes 152 liters [40 gallons] of soft drinks each year, well above the “safe” consumption of soft drinks: consumption
of more than three cans of soda per week is linked to an increased risk of diabetes.
The soft drink tax initially was supported as one
means of resolving the dispute about Mexico’s imposition, in January 2002, of a 20 percent tax on high-fructose corn
syrup (HFCS) and soft drinks made with it. This tax led to an estimated annual loss of US$950 million in U.S. sales of HFCS
to Mexico.
The U.S. produces sweeteners more efficiently than
Mexico, whereas free trade in sweeteners between the U.S. and Mexico is to be implemented in 2008.
The U.S. protested the taxation to the World Trade
Organization (WTO), on the grounds that this Mexican tax discriminates against imports of HFCS from the United States. And
the WTO ruled in favor of the U.S. in 2005.
Not emphasized in the news reports is the fact
that diabetes is a major public health problem in Mexico, and that the consumption of soft drinks increases the weight of
Mexico’s already overweight population. In a nation in which the condition of the poor is a major concern — partly
addressed by the $500 pesos [US$46.00] monthly pension that will be given to 1.3 million rural poor people over 70 years of
age — extreme malnutrition is disappearing in most of Mexico.
Mexico’s 2006 National Survey of Health and
Nutrition states that 1.6 percent of children under the age of 5 are emaciated, 5 percent are underweight and 12.7 percent
are shorter than anticipated. In contrast, 5 percent of children under 5 and 26 percent of children between 5 and 11 years
of age were overweight. Overweight has increased in all age groups, and overweight is greater among women than among men:
almost 60 percent of adult women are overweight.
Overweight in the elderly population decreases
in importance, as those overweight at earlier years have died, leaving healthier and slimmer Mexicans as the surviving population.
The problem is not confined to Mexico. Among the
8 million adults residing along the U.S.-Mexico border, 15.7 percent of them, or approximately 1.2 million, have type 2 diabetes.
Pre-diabetes affects approximately one million individuals, impacting 51 percent of women and 49 percent of men. Obese
persons along the U.S. border have 2.8 times greater risk of developing diabetes than persons with normal weight, and on the
Mexican side the risk is 2.2 times greater.
What is to be done?
Taxes on soft drinks, above the general value added
tax of 15 percent, have been rejected. Changes in behavior are increasingly encouraged in the United States, for example by
sending home “report cards” on a school child’s body mass index and risk for diabetes.
Mexico needs additional strategies because many Mexicans
believe that diabetes is caused by emotional distress, fright and lower levels of living, rather than poor diet and lack of
exercise. They prefer traditional herbal treatments for diabetes in a family setting. Suggestions are that community recreation
classes would be more effective than individual exercise, and that support by family members is essential.
Conservatives argue against a protective “Nanny
State,” in which governments, like nannies or mothers, legislate to enforce what they tell you to do. In the absence
of either high taxes on soft drinks, or improved anti-diabetes legislation and practices, Mexico may eliminate its nannies
and thereby many of its children as well.
Laura Randall, a MexiData.info guest columnist, is editor of Changing Structure of Mexico: Political, Social and Economic
Prospects, Second Edition (Spanish version: Reinventar México). She can be reached at lrandall@nyc.rr.com.
