
Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children - hvo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/19/mexico-kids-junk-food-ban/
======
jeffreyrogers
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_oxi...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223779598_Lipid_oxidation_in_aging_and_age-
dependent_disease)

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12013175_Peroxidati...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12013175_Peroxidation_of_linoleic_acid_and_its_relation_to_aging_and_age_dependent_diseases)

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5931176_The_Importa...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5931176_The_Important_Role_of_Lipid_Peroxidation_Processes_in_Aging_and_Age_Dependent_Diseases)

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).

~~~
Dylan16807
That goes against everything I've been told about the types of fats. How much
evidence is there for this?

~~~
partyboat1586
Take it for what it is: [http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-
oils.shtml](http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml)

~~~
Dylan16807
> When unsaturated oils are exposed to free radicals they can create chain
> reactions of free radicals

This seems like the most important claim and also has no citations.

~~~
JoshuaDavid
I mean from an organic chemistry perspective it's obviously true. If you throw
an electron at a C=C double bond, you get a ·C-C¯: which will then go ahead
and bond with an H⁺ that's floating around, leaving you with a radical still
bound to your initial molecule, so the theory is

    
    
        CH₃-CH=CH-CH₃ + · + ROH ⇒ CH₃-ĊH-CH₂-CH₃ + :O¯R
        CH₃-ĊH-CH₂-CH₃ + HOR' ⇒ CH₃-CH₂-CH₂-CH₃ + ·OR'
    

and then the · on your ·OR' restarts the cycle, and the cycle doesn't stop
until you get

    
    
        RO· + ·OR' ⇒ ROOR'
    

which is gonna be some random peroxide that wouldn't normally form, or

    
    
       CH₃-ĊH-CH₂-CH₃ + CH₃-ĊH-CH₂-CH₃ ⇒  CH₃-CH-CH₂-CH₃
                                              |
                                          CH₃-CH-CH₂-CH₃
    

which is gonna be some _really_ random molecule with who knows what effects.

Now how important this is in a biological context I have no idea. There is a
plausible mechanism for it to affect cellular chemistry, but the problem is
that "a plausible mechanism" and "an actual effect" are very far from the same
thing, and biochemistry is _complicated_.

The citation I'd want to see is that the chain reactions of free radicals _do
something biologically interesting_ , or, even better, that diets high and low
in polyunsaturated fats lead to significant health differences in animal
models.

------
iwebdevfromhome
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.

~~~
dang
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.

------
jeffreyrogers
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
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
I get your point, but it's not hard to tax the correct foods. Just start with
the worst, such as sugary drinks.

~~~
abenga
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.

------
maximente
more info on Chile, mentioned in article:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/health/chile-soda-
warning...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/health/chile-soda-warning-
label.html)

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
Diet Coke is like liquid Gold. I’m all in.

~~~
munk-a
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.

------
navailable
Covid shows that governments who fail to encourage nutritious diets will end
up with higher healthcare costs.

~~~
controversy
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.

~~~
munk-a
That doesn't really go any way towards explaining why Canada, Europe or the
Oceania[1] democracies have done so well in the crisis - nor does it explain
how Brazil has done so poorly.

I think there is more counter evidence then supporting evidence for
authoritarian governments being necessary for dealing with pandemics.

1\. Please note - comparatively well, Canada, Europe & Oceania aren't doing
_perfect_ they're just doing significantly better than the states.

~~~
nostromo
> Europe [has] done so well in the crisis

UK, Sweden, Italy, Spain, and Belgium all have had more COVID-19 deaths per
capita than the US. And France has a rate nearly equal to the US.

UK, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, and Netherlands all have worse case
fatality rates than the US. And so does Canada. (But, this may be because the
US has done more testing.)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/05/8993658...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/05/899365887/charts-
how-the-u-s-ranks-on-covid-19-deaths-per-capita-and-by-case-count)

~~~
throwaway57002
Why on earth would 'per capita' be a relevant metric? Is a death less
impactful or important when it's in a more populated country?

Also keep in mind Europe was struck _before_ the US - the worst of the first
wave is behind them while the US is still riding it down

------
cpursley
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.

~~~
biddit
How much of that government policy was created in reaction to lobbying by
corporations though?

~~~
refurb
Is it too much to ask for politicians to do the right thing regardless of
lobbying?

------
olau
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.

~~~
thisisnico
We tax alcohol and cigarettes because they are bad for you, but are totally
fine with binge eating as much junk food as you like. Obesity is a massive
epidemic. Heart attack and stroke are the number one killers, with obesity the
highest cause. I'm all for putting warning labels on food showing the
potential problems of overconsumption.

~~~
jachell
I bet if you ask any random person in the US if McDonald's is bad for you,
they will say yes.

I don't think the obesity epidemic is from lack of information.

~~~
s5300
This is incorrect.

Honestly - I can't blame anybody who could be found lurking, let alone posting
on hackers news to think there's no way that this isn't common sense. However,
it's not. It's really, unfortunately, very far from it in the U.S.

I now cannot easily find it (at least in a brief search on Google) because of
recent bullshit regarding the keywords, but a few years back, there was a
medical case that briefly made news. Woman in her thirties, not mentally
deficient (by any diagnosis anyways), job holding, etc - was hospitalized at
near death from a variety of issues that had gradually become quite severe.

Cause of the issues? She'd, by her, family, and friends accounts, not drank
plain water in years, pushing near a decade. The majority of her fluid intake,
that entire time, had been Coors Light (sparingly sodas, other
sugary/alcoholic drinks that weren't plain water). Her justification as to why
she had no idea this could cause any bodily harm is because it was "light"

It's bad. Truthfully, I'm happy for you that you get to live a life where you
don't know/haven't been exposed to how bad. But, it's _bad_ and I don't see it
getting better any time soon.

~~~
jachell
I don't appreciate the condescending tone.

"2013 nationally representative phone survey of about 2000 subjects showed
that one-fifth of Americans thought FF was good for health, whereas two-thirds
considered FF not good. Even over two-thirds of weekly FF consumers (47% of
the total population) thought FF not good."

Note: FF = fast food

[https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/9/5/590/5062131](https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/9/5/590/5062131)

There's also this scene from Fat Head:
[https://youtu.be/evcNPfZlrZs?t=1258](https://youtu.be/evcNPfZlrZs?t=1258)

~~~
liability
> _one-fifth of Americans thought FF was good for health_

I wonder what portion of Americans have a troll mentality and will say stupid
shit to pollers just for fun. Probably not far off one in five...

------
xtracto
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-
est...](https://www.milenio.com/ciencia-y-salud/nuevo-etiquetado-estos-son-
los-primeros-productos-nom-051)

------
thewickedaxe
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.

~~~
liability
I know it's in vogue to blame everything on America, but Mexico has a thriving
domestic junk food industry too. And frankly, many of their snacks are much
better than anything America makes (Takis in particular, I think I'm addicted
to them...)

Anyway I support this law. Banning junk food/drinks for kids is long overdue.
It's little different from banning the sale of cigarettes to kids.

~~~
plafl
I don't think most people blame USA, it's just "progress". Yesterday at the
supermarket I noticed the disproportionate ratio between healthy food (and I
count there red meat) and junk food (snacks, sweets,...)

~~~
spanhandler
Low- or zero-prep junk food is also incredibly cheap. When I see comparisons
done it's usually ingredient costs of healthy food to full-price junk food
costs, but that's _not_ how poor people shop for junk food. They go to Taco
Bell when the tacos are like 60¢ each or less, through promotions or coupons.
They buy Totino's frozen pizzas eight at a time, on sale at half-off. They buy
giant bags of store brand sugary cereal and pairs of 3L bottles of store-brand
soda, again, on sale. Costco pizzas (they are _so cheap_ on a calories-per-
dollar basis, for zero-prep hot food) and bakery items for the enterprising
slightly-less-poor who can scrape together the annual fee. Whichever chips or
snack crackers are on sale. Off-brand pop tarts—holy crap those are _calorie
bombs_ and very cheap and you wouldn't believe how many kids have a couple of
those for breakfast most every day. And so on.

Even relatively-healthy-but-not-really-healthy frozen meals can't compete with
the outright _crap_. It's so very cheap.

------
jackfoxy
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
The ancient Romans used lead acetate as an artificial sweetener. It's shocking
to consider this practice in the modern era though.

~~~
dylan604
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.

------
OCASM
Adults will just buy them for the kids. I bet tons of stores will just ignore
the law too.

~~~
baconandeggs
Isn't this what already happens?

~~~
aylmao
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)

------
sitkack
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.ucsf.edu/news/2009/06/8187/obesity-and-metabolic-
syndrome-driven-fructose-sugar-diet)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

~~~
macspoofing
>These products should be outright banned. Folks can make wonderful pastries
at home.

Sugar is sugar. What's the difference between a homemade pastry and store
bought pastry?

~~~
fouric
A homemade pastry has fewer preservatives and additives, you have greater
control over the contents, requires a time and effort investment, and is not
heavily marketed with prominent placement in grocery stores and appealing,
colorful packaging. There are both nutritional and psychological differences
between the two that make the homemade version effectively much less unhealthy
for you.

~~~
macspoofing
>A homemade pastry has fewer preservatives and additives

Sugar is sugar.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
Those things aren't sugar though.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
I'm not sure if you're missing the point intentionally or unintentionally but
while those chemicals sometimes can cause health problems later in life but
the sugar is what's causing the calories that are causing the obesity that is
causing the health problems we want to mitigate.

The sugar is the problem and both the pastries have the same sugar. The
homemade one may be marginally better but it's a distinction without a
meaningful difference. The problems caused by oddball chemicals used in
industrial food manufacturing are less than a rounding error compared to the
problems caused by obesity.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
No, it is actually both things. The sugar causes people to eat the stuff and
does contribute to obesity, but sugar is only a contributer. The additives and
ingredients like vegetable oils (which cause health problems of their own due
to their chemical structure) also contain a lot of calories (fat contains more
calories per gram than sugar).

In Australia obesity increased while sugar consumption decreased. The
additives really matter and have a huge impact on human health--they are not a
rounding error, but it was a great marketing tactic on behalf of various food
industry groups to vilify sugar while deflecting from the other ingredients
that are similarly problematic.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
>ingredients like vegetable oils (which cause health problems of their own due
to their chemical structure) also contain a lot of calories (fat contains more
calories per gram than sugar).

Which are present in home cooked baked goods too.

I know it's not as simple as just "sugar=fat" but the difference between home
cooked junk food and industrially cooked junk food is vanishingly small.

~~~
liability
> _but the difference between home cooked junk food and industrially cooked
> junk food is vanishingly small._

In terms of chemistry/nutrition I agree. However there is a huge difference in
convienence. Pastries are a huge pain in the ass to make, and consequently I
only make two or three pies a year. Store bought pastries are trivial to
acquire and gorge on seven days a week.

------
coolspot
[http://archive.is/iJVHc](http://archive.is/iJVHc)

------
pengaru
Dumb, just tax fructose in proportion to how much is added. Ths US should do
the same thing.

~~~
seiferteric
If we just didn't subsidize its production, that would be a start.

~~~
kube-system
It's a tough situation. Much of the idea behind agriculture subsides is to
protect against black-swan events.

~~~
seiferteric
Doesn't crop insurance exist? Why the need to constantly subsidize?

~~~
kube-system
You can't eat insurance money.

We are lucky to live in a age of a dramatic global decline in famine, but a
large scale war or natural disaster could potentially unravel this progress in
a devastating way.

Subsidies can do preventative tasks that insurance cannot -- like securing
additional capacity of food stores and farm land that farmers wouldn't
normally do unless they were being paid to do so.

~~~
seiferteric
True, but the US gov't stockpiles grain, oil and other things for those kind
of events. I don't see how subsidies help in those scenarios either.

~~~
kube-system
Yes, but much like the PPE stockpile, those are only a stopgap measure and
aren't really enough to be a comprehensive solution on their own.

------
javier10e6
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
Same. Yeah I think people love to blame this on entirely on junk food, but
seems it is largely an increase in sedentary lifestyle.

------
bothersumman
Work a MCO and I scream this during medical rounds and the importance of a the
endocrine System and I get ghost looks

------
neonate
[https://archive.is/iJVHc](https://archive.is/iJVHc)

------
x87678r
Can we ban sugary breakfasts too? Captain Crunch, Froot Loops & their ilk
should be illegal.

~~~
vmchale
Are they really that bad? I mean Froot Loops are weird but you don't really
eat them often?

~~~
brundolf
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.

------
tracker1
Coming soon... "Real Juice!"

------
Vorh
Junk food prohibition. Soon, secret clubs selling candy requiring passwords to
get in. I predict state-run candy stings in the future.

------
the_70x
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
Would this make the cartels even stronger?

~~~
hyeomans
always

------
chrisco255
Are they going to ban tacos too?

~~~
aketchum
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
Hot salsa _is not_ optional.

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

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

~~~
chrisco255
There's typically relatively little meat and they are mostly carbs.

~~~
s5300
Have you been to Mexico? Or even SoCal?

I don't think I recall having eaten any of near thousand tacos, even those for
$0.50, that had "relatively little meat" and "are mostly carbs" and most often
heard the sentiment of not understanding how you were getting such a great
deal from non-natives, and natives typically informing inquirers that that's
just... how things are and have been.

Maybe deeper in South America? I don't know, haven't been and haven't done
much research. But North America? I very much disagree with you and believe
that most others would too.

------
thebean11
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.

~~~
aylmao
> 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
I guess I'm thinking more about restaurants, I never purchased alcohol from a
store while underage.

------
spodek
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.

