Coke with your enchilada?
NAFTA is making Mexico sick. Literally. Since the implementation of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) in 1994 and the influx of unhealthy processed food, sugary drinks, and raw soy and corn imports—the latter two products used to make highly processed foods and feed livestock—Mexico has had a spike in lifestyle diseases including diabetes, heart disease and obesity and has surpassed the United States as the most obese nation in the world.
In Civil Eats, Judy Bankman writes about the nutritional transition that Mexico has made from a healthy natural foods diet to a "western style" diet of high protein, high sugar and highly processed food.
On a visit to southern Mexico in 2008, I was shocked to see Coca-Cola billboards dotting rural highways, and roadside tiendas selling bottles of Coke along with local produce. Mexico consumes more gallons of sugary beverages per year than any other country. It’s certainly not coincidental that 9 million people in Mexico are suffering from diabetes.
Mexicans also just surpassed the U.S. as the most obese nation in the world, with an astonishing prevalence rate of 32.8 percent. Mortality rates due to heart attack, diabetes, and high blood pressure have increased significantly along with the spike in obesity rates. The main driver of these troubling health concerns is the energy-dense, nutrient-poor “Western” diet, which has already changed the food landscape in Mexico, pervading areas both urban and rural.
Of course, rising income is a factor in changing diets in Mexico and elsewhere. However, trade liberalization also plays a huge role in what food is accessible in developing countries.
In 2011, Mexicans consumed 172 liters per capita of Coke, compared to the 1991 pre-NAFTA level of 69 liters per capita. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the consumption of animal fat in Mexico increased from about 34.7 grams per capita per day in 1991 to 46.9 grams per capita per day in 2009. A recent study linked these and other resulting dietary changes with an unsettlingly high 12 percent increase in obesity in Mexico between 2000 and 2006. Though obviously an unintended consequence of NAFTA, this shows that trade can actually impact public health.
Judy Bankman cites an amazingly telling
2011 study at the University of California, Los Angeles, which found that the closer you are to the U.S. (geographically and culturally), the higher your risk of obesity.
The United States population and our planet would have benefited if the U.S. had imported Mexico's more natural, sustainable diet. When will we learn that "wealth" does not mean unhealthy over-consumption?