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

washingtonpost.com

41–50 of 302 posts

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

#41
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

35k murders is a lot of fucking murders.

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

#42
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.

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

#44
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

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

#45
post #16

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... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal

Very nice, works bit less well with internet, but still...

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

#46
post #11
post #7

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.

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

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.

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

#47
post #7

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.

I think if the goal is that you want kids to eat less of this stuff, then just don't let kids buy it.

If the goal is to raise money, then maybe some sort of tax is the better bet, but you have to keep in mind who benefits from the raised money vs how much of their money you're taking. This would be a regressive tax & poorer people tend to eat more junk food and have more health problems, too. I mean, don't discount the externality that such a tax would disproportionately punish poor people for buying certain snacks.

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

#48

you mean like taco's and enchiladas? as well as the myriad extremely tasty but insanely unhealthy Mexican foods?

How are tacos unhealthy? It is mainly just meat in a corn tortilla.

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.

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

#49

you mean like taco's and enchiladas? as well as the myriad extremely tasty but insanely unhealthy Mexican foods?

How are tacos unhealthy? It is mainly just meat in a corn tortilla.

There's typically relatively little meat and they are mostly carbs.

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

#50
post #16

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... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

This kind of comment asking for it to be banned is always from an extremely uninformed person. Addictive poison, really? Wait til they see what's in fruit. Or just talk to a sports scientist about why it's in sports drinks. Of course in excess it's bad, but normal sugar consumption is not an issue.

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