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Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children

• coolspot 6y ago
  http://archive.is/iJVHc http://archive.is/iJVHc
• hpoe 6y ago
  Because all of the laws prohibiting alcohol to minors has worked so well, or preventing minors from viewing pornography. Like this sounds like an SNL skit, "Hey I'm going to need to see some ID before you can get those Doritos." Cut to outside the shop he's handing it to a 14 year old suddenly lights sirens "PUT THE DORITOS ON THE GROUND AND PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD!". Another cut to a prison courtyard. "Hey man so what did you do." "Me, I ran the biggest underground junk food rink in the country. There wasn't a Hoho, or Snickers in the country that hit the street without my knowing about it. You think M13 is scary, my network made them look like chumps, Sinola feared the sounds of my crew. Hey you want some of the sweet stuff." Furtively shows him some powdered donuts. On the flip side Mexico has enough of a problem right now preventing people from doing hard drugs let alone gummy worms, so the practical effect will probably be nil.
  • bvaldivielso 6y ago
    What makes you think that laws prohibiting alcohol to minors aren't useful? Those laws don't have to completely eliminate alcohol consumption by minors to be successful, they just have to make it less likely to happen. My gut feeling is that alcohol consumption among teenagers would be higher if it wasn't banned, though I don't have any data to back my claim.
    • handmodel 6y ago
      I don't get the cynicism either. In the US cigarette usage has gone down tremendously through the decades as laws have gotten more restrictive and advertising more out there. I'm sure I would eat less junk food if it was less accessible.
      • adventured 6y ago
        It's better to raise the cost than attempt access regulations as Mexico is doing. When it comes to food, access regulations are a nightmare to implement and enforce by comparison to taxes (which can be introduced in a fairly smooth, stealthy manner, and then gradually raised to experiment with consumption consequences). Especially when it comes to blatant non-essentials like cigarettes and junk food. You'll get a very nice direct reduction in consumption out of cost increases up to a point. Besides that, there's an excellent argument that junk food should not be actually banned for children (An 11 year old shouldn't be allowed to ever buy a bag of chips? That's some extreme government overreach). If you're the US, step one is to ban high fructose corn syrup in food as being unsafe for human consumption. Step two, increase the cost of junk food via taxes. The US allowed its obesity epidemic to get out of control by making junk food too inexpensive and allowing high fructose corn syrup to be put into too many products. If Doritos cost $8 per bag instead of $4, people will eat a lot fewer bags; if boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes cost $5 instead of $2, people will buy fewer boxes. Regulating sugar in relation to calories in a packaged consumer food item, may also work quite effectively as a simple slider to test (just begin by gently nudging it downward, see what happens).
    • asveikau 6y ago
      My impression is that teenage drinking and smoking was really huge in say, the 80s compared to today. Frankly, often when I hear somebody like the commenter above I think they may have had some rowdy teenage years in the 80s or thereabouts and is kind of projecting that onto today's youth. "The laws don't work!" Maybe it wouldn't have worked for them. But in the time since... Although, I don't think it's realistic to expect the laws to get consumption to zero. Maybe it's not even strictly the goal. Reduction, or mild taboo, is not the same as total elimination. People can still buy their kids sugary snacks. I give my kids sugary snacks in small amounts, but might support such a ban, because childhood and adult obesity is a pretty serious problem.
      • thisisnico 6y ago
        It's worked. Almost no-one I know smokes, and it's uncool to smoke.
        • s5300 6y ago
          Do you not see why this comment is complete anecdata?
          • asveikau 6y ago
            Do you not see that anecdata is also sometimes correlated with real data? That we may be able to look around us and at life experience and observe real trends? Here's what I get from some quick googling. Decline in underage drinking, 1991-2013: https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance101/Underage13.htm https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance101/Unde... Youth use of cigarettes declining (though I believe I have read that vaping counter-acts this trend when looking at all nicotine products): https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/substance-use/drugs/tobacco/trends/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/substance...
            • s5300 6y ago
              Both of your links seem to have to do with the United States and I was more specifically commenting towards they who are apparently the arbitrator of "cool and uncool"
  • shrumm 6y ago
    Obesity is an external cost that just doesn't get accounted for in a free market. So far, regulation is a blunt tool, but still a lot more effective than other tools we have to deal with this. For instance, in Indonesia, it's common for Big Tobacco to sell cheap cigarettes near schools [1]. This is insane, but from a purely free market perspective it makes perfect sense. Get your product in peoples hands as early as possible, and now you've got a customer for decades. All the social costs of higher rates of cancer etc will be borne by the taxpayer, so why should big tobacco care. [1] http://www.tobaccoinduceddiseases.org/Density-of-cigarette-retailers-near-schools-and-sales-to-minors-nin-Banyuwangi-Indonesia,115798,0,2.html http://www.tobaccoinduceddiseases.org/Density-of-cigarette-r...
    • ksdale 6y ago
      Costs are only borne by the taxpayer where the taxpayer pays for healthcare, but that's a choice as well. We could just as easily say that the taxpayer won't be responsible for the cost. We've chosen to have the taxpayer bear the cost, which is very probably good and right, but I think we should be careful using that fact to make decisions about other people's body's. I think this can be distinguished from other externalities like smoking, where other people have to smell the smoke, or pollution that other people have to smell, or that kills their plants or animals. Some externalities can't be opted out of, but some can, and that fact greatly reduces the case for regulation, in my opinion.
      • acituan 6y ago
        > We could just as easily say that the taxpayer won't be responsible for the cost. I thought Covid made it obvious that there is no insular, zero-externality health of individuals. Public health is a public commons, and we will be responsible for the cost whether through taxes and preventive action or through other channels in a reactive manner. Being obese has tons of externalities other than healthcare costs. Higher levels of sickness and absence from work reduces productivity, being out of employment due to disability completely demolishes it. Premature mortality means the national output is reduced because we are losing the societal investment on grown, skilled, experienced adults to death. Some businesses bear higher operating costs; e.g. larger seats or more fuel for aircrafts. Deteriorating mental health is not only a healthcare cost, you and your kids interact with people daily, you make collective decisions (e.g. vote in elections) with them. In short, wellbeing of your fellow humans is never a zero-externality phenomenon and it can't really be distinguished from smoking or pollution because you can't opt out of the consequences of a lower GDP or mentally unwell peers.
  • randompwd 6y ago
    I'm really curious how does one end up forming an opinion like yours? Have you ever done any honest self-reflection and asked why you are like this? Really curious how someone could be that offended a) by something in another country & b) by something which reduces obesity/quality of life amongst vunerable & impressionable children? What have you read/done to become the person I see here today?
• iwebdevfromhome 6y ago
  The title is a little misleading, this is happening in the state of Oaxaca only. I guess that if it works the government is going to try and implement it across the whole country.
  • dylan604 6y ago
    Lots of US federal law started as California state law first. According to labeling, there are a few things in life that are known to cause cancer only in California.
  • aylmao 6y ago
    Oaxaca and now Tabasco too. Oaxaca was first a couple of weeks ago and Tabasco just voted this in recently [1]. [1] https://www.milenio.com/estados/comida-chatarra-tabasco-prohiben-venta-ninos https://www.milenio.com/estados/comida-chatarra-tabasco-proh...
  • dang 6y ago
    OK, we've replaced the title with the more narrowly scoped language from the first paragraph. Another issue here is the phrase "moving to". That's not the same thing as actually doing it, and frequently the processes that articles like this are describing end up outputting to /dev/null.
• olau 6y ago
  Initiatives like this has always appeared to me as a cheap way for societies to improve the health of their population. Perhaps better done in the form of a tax - in the sense that junk food causes an externality in the form of health problems, that does seem warranted. The underlying problem is that the incentives are not aligned.
  • epmaybe 6y ago
    I feel like we were always taught that taxes were significantly better at curbing usage compared to bans or limits - the classic example being the cigarette tax
    • pm90 6y ago
      The difference here is that the ban is applicable to minors. We already ban minors from a slew of products, this is only extending that list.
    • inerte 6y ago
      To be fair, cigarettes have additional restrictions like where and to whom it can be sold, and also advertisement. Or even being explicitly called out on media ratings: PG-13, contains smoking! I don't know if anyone has quantified the effects on sales of each measure, but they certainly add up with the additional taxes.
    • teknopaul 6y ago
      Cigarette tax is a scam to raise money from selling drugs. Cigs have inelastic demand. In Germany they hit a point where a price rise (in the name of health) resulted in reduced smoking and less tax collected and they immediately wanted to reduce tax. That caused a scandal so they changed tack to homogonize tax across the eu which, incidentally of course, would reduce tax in Germany. Tax is charged on cigs because it works and no other reason, its regressive tax too. I prefer that to a ban, but let's not pretend selling cigs at high prices is in the interest of cig smokers. The only place it works is where there are nicotine alternatives.
      • 6y ago
• maximente 6y ago
  more info on Chile, mentioned in article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/health/chile-soda-warning-label.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/health/chile-soda-warning... it's probably safe to say that this is a global public health imperative, given the suffering/costs/economic loss around the world that these beverages and food-like products cause. would also like to see some money from things like corn driven to healthy food subsidies e.g. spinach (or pick your favorite) to offset any increase in costs from taxation also: bearish for coca-cola long term?
  • birdyrooster 6y ago
    Diet Coke is like liquid Gold. I’m all in.
    • jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      Corporate America seems to run on Diet Coke.
    • munk-a 6y ago
      I have some severe concerns about the artificial sweeteners in Diet Coke - I kicked the soda habit a while back but I always stayed well away from diet sodas.
  • nxc18 6y ago
    Coca Cola is very aware of the health issues and has been diversifying for a long time. Around 2015 IIRC they got into the diary game with Fairlife milk, they own core power. They do lots of business in tea (gold peak and others) as well as coffee. You can recognize the bottles for a lot of the products because they use the same one with a different wrapper - core power, illy, fairlife and others share. (Note: illy is a partnership) I’ll also point out their zero sugar line, out since 2017, is fantastic - much better than the older diet technology in terms of taste. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/brands https://www.coca-colacompany.com/brands
• thewickedaxe 6y ago
  This law is way way way overdue. American Corporations are killing Mexico's youth with junk food. I know kids who exclusively drink soda. Healthy, beautiful kids who deserve to go out and play and live their best lives.
  • i_love_liberals 6y ago
    Do you know that Mexico has a law against murder? Curious if you know how many people, specifically in Mexico, specifically in Mexico city follow that and other laws?
    • lhorie 6y ago
      Some quick googling says 35k murders in 2019 for a population of about 9M. So, in mexico city, over 99.5% of the population follows the law that says you can't murder people. Not sure what your point is.
      • meddlepal 6y ago
        35k murders is a lot of fucking murders.
        • lhorie 6y ago
          Yes, but to put it in context, heart disease and diabetes cause a lot more deaths [1] and obesity has been shown to increase the risk of those conditions. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/960030/mexico-causes-death/#:~:text=Mexico%3A%20most%20common%20cause%20of%20death%202017&text=Ranked%20first%20are%20heart%20conditions,of%20homicides%20in%20the%20country https://www.statista.com/statistics/960030/mexico-causes-dea....
      • inasio 6y ago
        That's for the whole of Mexico, so more than an order of magnitude off (120 million). Still an insane number of murders, what a tragedy.
• anothermoron 6y ago
  Imagine being a fit person who decide to drink a glass of coke on a friday night but he can't because fat people can't control themselves.
• sitkack 6y ago
  Sugar is an addictive poison. These products should be outright banned. Folks can make wonderful pastries at home. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2009/06/8187/obesity-and-metabolic-syndrome-driven-fructose-sugar-diet https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2009/06/8187/obesity-and-metabolic... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • kaiju0 6y ago
    While I agree, I've never seen rage like taking someones preferred foods away.
    • spacephysics 6y ago
      As much as I am a libertarian on allowing people to choose what to eat, the outrage reminds me of an addict being told they need to cut down/remove their addictive substance.
      • rurp 6y ago
        I don't think that rage has anything to do with addiction. If someone took away the healthy foods I like to eat I would be enraged too. People just don't like outsiders micromanaging their daily lives.
      • smt88 6y ago
        Taking away someone's preferred food can mean taking away part of their culture, a connection to memories of their childhood, the only part of their day they look forward to, etc. People can love and care about unhealthy things without being addicted to them. Most white people would hate to give up cancer-causing time out in the sun, but that doesn't mean it's an addiction.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • 6y ago
• AnCapAndrew 6y ago
  - Have some remnants of freedom - Some people make poor decisions - Tyrants restrict freedom - Repeat until gulags are full
• _prototype_ 6y ago
  you mean like taco's and enchiladas? as well as the myriad extremely tasty but insanely unhealthy Mexican foods?
  • blackguardx 6y ago
    How are tacos unhealthy? It is mainly just meat in a corn tortilla.
    • Press2forEN 6y ago
      Meat has been a global climate catastrophe wrapped in a corn tortilla. The production of meat is literally killing us, and I'm sorry but its worth taking away traditional cuisines so that humanity doesn't go extinct.
      • chrisco255 6y ago
        No, sorry. Cows and other ruminants have been part of the ecosystem for tens of millions of years. They're extremely good for the soil and for the environment and it turns out humans are highly evolved to eat meat. We invented fire and hunting tools for it hundreds of thousands of years ago. It's one of the most nutrient dense and healthy foods you can consume as long as you don't add a bunch of crap to it. Humanity wouldn't even exist without meat.
        • FreeFull 6y ago
          The difference is, now, thanks to humans, there are 1.4 billion cows. And a lot of the cows are fed things like corn, which makes them produce a lot more methane than a more natural diet would. A million years ago, you wouldn't have anywhere near this many ruminants.
        • km3r 6y ago
          I think the solution is somewhere in between. There is a lot more cows today than there was 200 years ago. The negatives get compounded with CO2 and methane being released, plus the water and energy used to make beef over other meats or sources of protein is much higher. Though yes we did evolve to eat some meat. But the average American eats a lot of red meat and the average American has a less than healthy cholesterol level. So let's just eat less red meat. If we all cut down our red meat consumption by 50%, the environment would be much better off, we would be healthier, and we would still be able to get the nutrients we need from meat.
• navailable 6y ago
  Covid shows that governments who fail to encourage nutritious diets will end up with higher healthcare costs.
  • controversy 6y ago
    It’s not just encourage. What we’re finding is that the government has to be authoritarian. China welded people into their homes to keep them from spreading COVID. They literally caged them like animals and threw them into trucks. Now Mexico is denying children potato chips. Think about universal healthcare and alcohol. How much money is spent on alcohol related issues? The best answer is to ban its sale. Same for tobacco. Enough people have shown then are unable or unwilling to do the right thing. As a result junk food, booze and smokes need to go the way of freedom of speech. We need to ban them.
    • QuercusMax 6y ago
      Or... how about we provide treatment for people who are abusing alcohol, drugs, etc? There are billions of people who can responsibly use alcohol. Banning it doesn't make any sense for those who aren't addicts.
      • controversy 6y ago
        Doesn’t matter. Look at those who try to ban guns and free speech. Millions use both responsibility every day. Besides science has shown little benefit to alcohol and tobacco and no benefit to junk food. What we need is to ban cooking at home. Government soup kitchens. All consumption needs to be documented and controlled.
        • munk-a 6y ago
          > What we need is to ban cooking at home. This needs citation, seriously. Cooking at home, even cooking "insanely unhealthy" butter injected baked chicken at home, still seems to be a lot healthier for you than a hungry man dinner, so I think that the real issue is related to the preservatives and the salt & sugar required to mask those preservatives - that are used to unnaturally extend the self-life of pre-made and frozen food.
• jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  Improving diet would be one of the simplest ways of improving population health. Unfortunately any real changes will cause large, politically powerful corporations (Cargill, ADM, Coca-Cola, etc.) to lose a large amount of money[1], so I'm bearish on the ability to actually create meaningful changes. But just looking at photos on people on beaches from 2019 vs 1970 makes it clear how unhealthy the population is. [1]: In the US many of these companies are large exporters too, so it is very hard to do anything that hurts them since our exports are generally not very competitive.
  • cylon13 6y ago
    My concern is that if we can't trust the government to create a healthy recommended diet, how can we trust them to ban the correct foods? Their incentives seem to be more in line with propping up producers of large scale cheap pseudo foods with big lobbies than finding an actual healthy diet.
    • jules 6y ago
      I get your point, but it's not hard to tax the correct foods. Just start with the worst, such as sugary drinks.
      • abenga 6y ago
        It doesn't even need to be tax, even mandating that packaged foods' ingredients labeled in easily human-relatable units (table spoons, etc. instead of grams and joules) may help people make better decisions.
• chrisco255 6y ago
  Are they going to ban tacos too?
  • aketchum 6y ago
    I spent quite a bit of time in Nogales, Mexico and ate as many tacos as I could get my hands on. Across the board they were far healthier than anything I can get from a fast food restaurant in the states. The tacos in (Sonora) Mexico generally consist of: Corn tortilla, meat, cabbage, onions, cilantro. Optional hot salsa.
    • baconandeggs 6y ago
      Hot salsa is not optional.
  • throaway12461 6y ago
    tacos are not traditionally served in Oaxaca and are probably not a major contributor to obesity there. why say something so low-brow?
  • liability 6y ago
    I'm confident you can construct an unhealthy taco, but is there anything inherently wrong with tacos? Fundamentally it's just a bit of meat, veggies and cheese. The tortilla is grain and thus arguably not great, but tortillas are pretty small compared to the average sandwich bread.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      Sandwich bread is mostly air, tortillas are smaller, but they seem to contain a lot more substance.
      • CameronNemo 6y ago
        Tortillas are made from nixtamal, which has some nutritional improvements over raw/heat-only corn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
• pengaru 6y ago
  Dumb, just tax fructose in proportion to how much is added. Ths US should do the same thing.
  • smt88 6y ago
    Fructose is far from the only unhealthy ingredient in junk food.
    • pengaru 6y ago
      Fructose is arguably a poison indistinguishable from ethanol in some very consequential ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-alcoholic_fatty_liver_disease#Fructose_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-alcoholic_fatty_liver_dise...
  • seiferteric 6y ago
    If we just didn't subsidize its production, that would be a start.
    • pengaru 6y ago
      Sure, but if the alternative is banning which is never a good approach, taxing it makes a lot more sense IMHO. I'm no agriculture nerd but isn't much of the US particularly well suited to growing corn, regardless of subsidies?
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • kube-system 6y ago
      It's a tough situation. Much of the idea behind agriculture subsides is to protect against black-swan events.
      • seiferteric 6y ago
        Doesn't crop insurance exist? Why the need to constantly subsidize?
• OCASM 6y ago
  Adults will just buy them for the kids. I bet tons of stores will just ignore the law too.
  • jachell 6y ago
    I think this will happen too.
  • baconandeggs 6y ago
    Isn't this what already happens?
    • aylmao 6y ago
      Yes, to some degree, but it's also not uncommon for kids to use their allowances to buy junk food at the store. I remember growing up (I'm from Mexico) chips often had promos where you could find collectibles with cartoon characters in the bags [1]. The cool kids had huge stacks of these, so I begged my mom to get me chips mostly for the toy. I didn't have an allowance and my mom knew better so I never got any though. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazos
• the_70x 6y ago
  so under the law, anyone selling a candy to a child could be prosecuted as a criminal activity, with Mexico broken law system this seems to be a really bad idea
  • im3w1l 6y ago
    Would this make the cartels even stronger?
    • hyeomans 6y ago
      always
  • tdeck 6y ago
    Sounds like a great way for cops to extract bribes from small shop owners.
  • aylmao 6y ago
    The drinking and smoking age is 18. You can definitely get cigs and booze before your 18th birthday if you're crafty, but I've never seen a shop outwardly sell these and bribe cops, nor are cigs and booze trafficked by cartels— this just sounds ridiculous. Source: I grew up in Mexico. It's definitely more lax than the USA, but it's not the Wild West.
• jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  This is a good idea, and the people in the comments are rightly pointing out sugar's problems. But just as problematic as sugar are vegetable oils which are in almost every packaged product you can buy at the grocery store. They cause all sorts of health problems because the vegetable oils are extremely reactive (due to being unsaturated fats and so having double bonds that can react with other molecules inside your body). These are not called out as a health risk because the American agriculture industry makes an enormous amount of money exporting them and selling them to companies that make packaged/processed foods. Edit: just to clarify it is the poly-unsaturated fatty acids that are the problem, not fats in general. Fats like butter (saturated) or olive oil (mono-unsaturated) do not have these problems, while canola oil, soybean oil, etc. are poly-unsaturated and highly-reactive. Edit 2: research for these claims: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223779598_Lipid_oxidation_in_aging_and_age-dependent_disease https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223779598_Lipid_oxi... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12013175_Peroxidation_of_linoleic_acid_and_its_relation_to_aging_and_age_dependent_diseases https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12013175_Peroxidati... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5931176_The_Important_Role_of_Lipid_Peroxidation_Processes_in_Aging_and_Age_Dependent_Diseases https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5931176_The_Importa... These are from a lipid scientist rather than from nutrition scientists, so they are focusing on internal biological processes rather than health outcomes. I have not seen good nutrition studies on poly-unsaturated fats. However, studies of fat consumption that break out fats into saturated, mono-unsaturated, and poly-unsaturated fat categories generally show worse health outcomes for people consuming high intakes of poly-unsaturated fats. I will try to find a good study. These ingredients are not well studied, which is surprising when you consider how rapidly they've been added to the food supply (basically not at all present 100 years ago, to in every processed food today).
  • thebean11 6y ago
    It's a great idea in in theory, in practice I'm highly skeptical it will do anything but give police a new way to extract fines (bribes) from shopkeepers.
  • devmunchies 6y ago
    *refined sugar, not all sugar. sugar in a whole fruit aren't bad, the fibers in the fruit help your body break down and absorb the sugar over a longer period of time. just don't eat refined food.
• thebean11 6y ago
  Mexico is known for disregarding laws on alcohol sales to minors..what exactly do they expect the outcome of this to be? Just another way for the police to steal money from the poor. Great job.
  • exacube 6y ago
    "People disgard laws. Whats the point of laws? Laws are for police making money." The problem is the law enforcement, not the laws.
    • thebean11 6y ago
      Agreed, but laws cannot be created in a vacuum. You must take the real world into account, and take a practical approach. As someone who knows a little bit about Mexico, this seems like a law that completely ignores reality. Would you agree that government should avoid creating laws that in practice do more harm than good, even if the idea behind the law is good and just?
  • aylmao 6y ago
    > Mexico is known for disregarding laws on alcohol sales to minors..what exactly do they expect the outcome of this to be? I grew up in Mexico. You can definitely get booze before you're 18 if you're crafty and find the right store, but I don't see any general "outright disregard" of laws on alcohol sales to minors. I went to college in the USA— it's essentially the same.
    • thebean11 6y ago
      I guess I'm thinking more about restaurants, I never purchased alcohol from a store while underage.
• cpursley 6y ago
  It's interesting how quick people are to blame US corporations when it's the US government that subsidizes cheap carbs through the farm subsidy program (and on the flip-size in the US, subsidize the purchase of junk food via food stamps). Also, banning sales to children doesn't solve the real culprit - parents buying the junk food for their own children. At least in America, watch any parent fill up their carts and pay attention to what they buy.
  • aylmao 6y ago
    > Also, banning sales to children doesn't solve the real culprit - parents buying the junk food for their own children. At least in America, watch any parent fill up their carts and pay attention to what they buy. I grew up in Mexico. There's definitely a culture of drinking soda with meals for example. Parent's are definitely responsible for that. There's also definitely a lot of children buying junk food with their allowances. The individual bag of chips is very popular, and it's sold in every "corner store" on every neighborhood (I've seen less of these in the USA, but they're everywhere in Mexico).
  • biddit 6y ago
    How much of that government policy was created in reaction to lobbying by corporations though?
    • refurb 6y ago
      Is it too much to ask for politicians to do the right thing regardless of lobbying?
  • kyuudou 6y ago
    Why not just cut to the quick and ban children without a license /s
• jackfoxy 6y ago
  17 years ago there was a candy or confection sold in Mexico containing lead. I know this because I briefly contracted to a California state agency charged with reducing lead poisoning among children. Apparently lead, like many metals, imparts a kind of sweet taste, which is why there was, and probably still is, a problem with children eating old flaking paint containing lead. I have not followed this situation since. Does anyone know if this confection is still legal and available in Mexico? This was a lot more dangerous than any junk food.
  • liability 6y ago
    The ancient Romans used lead acetate as an artificial sweetener. It's shocking to consider this practice in the modern era though.
    • dylan604 6y ago
      That's interesting. Of all the years of making fun of the apartment lease addendum pages about lead paint, I had always just written it off to "dumb things people do". I had no idea there was any kind of rewarding behavior at all.
  • reaktivo 6y ago
    You might be referring to tamarind based candy, particularly tamarind sold in clay containers. You can search for it as "tamarindo ollita". This is mostly still available as far as I know.
• spodek 6y ago
  Nutrition writers struggle to name the industry without using the word food. "Junk food," "fast food," "ultra-processed food," "frankenfood," and so on all help the industry obfuscate that they've refined out and sell the addictive parts, which resemble their sources as much as heroin resembles poppy or cocaine coca leaves. We don't call heroin "fast poppy" or cocaine "junk coca." Doing so with the addictive refinements from other plants only confuses people that temporarily filling their bellies resembles nourishing themselves. Heroin would make us feel less hungry temporarily too, but we recognize it harms. Michael Pollan's "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" implies non-food isn't food, but he doesn't come up with the needed name for what's not food that he recommends avoiding eating. The word "doof" -- food backward -- is catching on among some nutritionists and food writers. The change in your world view that comes from differentiating food from doof is tremendous. You see 90% of the supermarket as a wasteland of addiction, plastic, and pollution. When people say poor people choose fast food over vegetables because they can buy more with their limited funds, you hear that they're buying doof instead of food. Companies selling doof displace farmers markets and people selling food. Doof is generally packaged, engineered to promote a short-term rush and long-term craving, and its pleasure comes from salt, sugar, fat, and convenience. I propose using the term doof for doof and avoiding referring to doof with any phrase including the word food.
• x87678r 6y ago
  Can we ban sugary breakfasts too? Captain Crunch, Froot Loops & their ilk should be illegal.
  • xtracto 6y ago
    Not if you are in the USA, maybe if you are in Mexico, although in Mexico the typical breakfast for kids is more like coffee with milk and chilaquiles (tortilla with tomato sauce) which might not be that healthy.
  • vmchale 6y ago
    Are they really that bad? I mean Froot Loops are weird but you don't really eat them often?
    • brundolf 6y ago
      I had cereal (usually sugary) for breakfast basically every day for about the first 20 years of my life. I don't think this is terribly uncommon. If it weren't for my mild lactose-intolerance I might never have switched to greek yogurt.
  • aylmao 6y ago
    I think another good move here is to ban the use of cartoon characters to promote unhealthy food. It's outright targeting of the population group most vulnerable to this marketing. In Chile they implemented regulations on the packaging of junk food and they yielded great results. They apparently saw a 25% reduction in sugary drink consumption in the first 18 months [1]. [1]: https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/internacionales/Consumo-de-bebidas-azucaradas-cae-en-Chile-tras-ley-de-etiquetado-de-alimentos-20200229-0021.html https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/internacionales/Consumo-de-b...
• xtracto 6y ago
  In addition to that, the federal government set new labeling rules for food. Processes food has to display a big-ugly sign as part of their label if the product contains more calories, sugar, salt or fat than the recommended dose: (pictures) https://www.milenio.com/ciencia-y-salud/nuevo-etiquetado-estos-son-los-primeros-productos-nom-051 https://www.milenio.com/ciencia-y-salud/nuevo-etiquetado-est...
• Vorh 6y ago
  Junk food prohibition. Soon, secret clubs selling candy requiring passwords to get in. I predict state-run candy stings in the future.
• javier10e6 6y ago
  No Coca Cola? No Jarritos? No Chaparritas? No Joya (De Naranja, Pi~a, Durazno, Uva, Mandarina, Fresa, Toronja, Ponche, Raiz, Manzana o Limon)? I drank all that crap In the 80s and I am not fat. I do have root canals and implants galore.
  • gedy 6y ago
    Same. Yeah I think people love to blame this on entirely on junk food, but seems it is largely an increase in sedentary lifestyle.
• neonate 6y ago
  https://archive.is/iJVHc https://archive.is/iJVHc
• tracker1 6y ago
  Coming soon... "Real Juice!"
• bothersumman 6y ago
  Work a MCO and I scream this during medical rounds and the importance of a the endocrine System and I get ghost looks