Mexico’s ‘Fat Tax’ Falls Short of Effective Change

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Mexico’s soda and junk food tax is not enough to raise obesity awareness.

If you are driving on the highway or are listening to the radio in Mexico, you have probably seen the billboard or heard the commercial asking, “Would you give your child 12 teaspoons of sugar?”

As of July, Mexico replaced the United States as the most overweight country in the world. According to the World Health Organization, about 70 percent of Mexican adults are overweight and a third are obese, which is leading to a rise in diseases like diabetes throughout the country. A major contributor to Mexico’s obesity epidemic is the excessive amount of soda consumption. Mexicans consume more than 40 gallons of soda a year, the highest in the world, while the United States consumes 31 gallons a year.

In response to these alarming developments, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, proposed an eight percent tax on sugary drinks and a five percent tax on “junk foods.” Mexico’s Congress approved the tax last Thursday and it will be signed into law by Peña Nieto in January.

This tax is a promising response to Mexico’s health crisis, but it will not solve the obesity problem.

Denmark is a good example of why this is the case.  In 2011, Denmark passed the world’s first “fat tax” on all foods with a saturated fat content above 2.3 percent with the goal of reducing consumption of unhealthy foods. As a result, businesses were negatively affected by a decline in sales, and Danes were shopping across the border in Germany where there was no tax on fatty foods. Denmark repealed the law less than a year later.

Mexico is not alone in the fight against obesity. Hungary has imposed its own taxes on salt and sugar in the past 18 months. Hungary is the unhealthiest country in the European Union: two-thirds of Hungarians are overweight or obese. The country has the lowest life expectancy and the highest salt consumption per capita. Even as sales of salty and sugary foods in Hungary are down, people still eat similarly unhealthy foods. These examples contribute to the concern that Mexico’s “fat tax” will not solve its underlying issues.

To really raise awareness about the health situation in Mexico, the Mexican government has to start educating people about healthier lifestyles and eating. A tax will simply change Mexicans’ buying habits. It will not discourage the consumption of soda and junk food or inform people why these foods are harmful. It cannot and will not change people’s habits.

Thanks to a three-year, $10 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies that will help finance an obesity prevention program in Mexico, Mexicans’ current living habits may begin to change. Bloomberg Philanthropies was established by Big Gulp opposition Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and everything his foundation plans to do in Mexico is similar to what he did here in New York. There will be more anti-obesity advertising campaigns, nutrition labeling and control of anti-junk-food television advertising aimed at children. But, can a program that was carried out in New York be carried out in Mexico?

According to Dr. Hugo Benavides, professor and director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Institute at Fordham, “you’re assuming a model that works in one place will work in another. This is not true. But no matter where it comes from, people have a way of making it their own. It will get incorporated in the system one way or the other.”

In order for the program to work, it must focus on the following areas: engaging children to adapt healthier habits from a young age, such as eliminating sodas and other junk foods from schools and replacing them with water, fruits and vegetables, encouraging daily exercise and starting education programs of healthier lifestyles for adults.

When people are educated and exposed to the facts about unhealthy lifestyles, people’s habits will change. Fifty years’ worth of anti-tobacco campaigns has decreased smoking by 50 percent. Campaigns against drinking and driving have decreased car accidents. Dr. Benavides noticed how anti-smoking campaigns “made it not so cool to be a smoker… there’s no doubt that people are smoking less than they were 20 years ago.” The success of these past and present campaigns proves Mexico’s anti-obesity campaigns will work.

Only time will tell if Mexico’s soda and junk food tax will be effective. If it is, there is no doubt other countries will seriously consider a similar tax on unhealthy food as an option to fight obesity. But, it is not the ideal plan.

For now, if Mexicans are not willing to pay extra for their sodas and other junk foods, they will need a lot of willpower to resist buying the foods they are unarguably addicted to.

Here is a friendly piece of advice for our neighbors down south: One less soda a day will keep death away.

Andrew Santis, GSB ’16, is an undeclared major from Flushing, N.Y.