Who's Sabotaging Colombians' Health?

'In less than 20 years, half of Bogotá's residents will be fat.' (El Tiempo)

The media reports that obesity in Colombia is growing to North American proportions.

Use of both legal and illegal drugs is rising among Bogotá youth.

And a recent survey of students found that use of both illegal drugs, like cocaine and marijuana, and a legal one: marijuana, is rising sharply among youth.

But both vices and drugs - legal ones, at least - have powerful lobbies to protect their right to poison their customers. Intense lobbying recently defeated legislation in Colombia's Congress which would have required companies to label foods high in sodium, saturate fats or sugars. (As if it would make any difference, judging by the rise in consumption of cigarettes, whose boxes carry big warnings.)

Perhaps televisions, cellphones and video games should carry warning labels, as well, because of the way they promote a sedentary lifestyle and waste our time.

Young women market Camel cigarettes near high schools and universities.

A young woman smoking.

What's the solution? Make these harmful products expensive, inconvenient to get and uncool. That won't be easy. But a good first step would be to actually enforce the law prohibiting the sale of loose cigarettes - which goes on on every streecorner and corner shop.

Cigarettes and candies for sale by a street vendor.

Who's sabotaging Colombians' health? Everybody, including themselves.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Sugar Conspiracy

There's no escaping: Selling junk food on La Septima.

We spend lots of time looking for supposed conspiracies: The Freemasons; The Bilderburg group; the Bush family and 9-11, the Kennedy assassination; the shooting of Colombian politician Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, and on an on.

But they all lack a key ingredient: Evidence.

Yet, the opposite is true of one deadly conspiracy staring us in the face: Big sugar.

It's bad when millions of people get addicted to a substance which can wreck their health. It's even

Junk food and sedentarianism
mean more obesity.

worse when that substance's producers have so much economic and political power that they fight for their right to push it on us.

Sugar's been in the news recently: A recent study found that more than half of Colombians are either overweight or obese - a result of consuming more and more sugary and other junk foods, as well as an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. And research increasingly points to it causing illnesses including diabetes, heart disease and even cancer.

The sugar epidemic cuts short countless lives every year. But even tho sugar harms many more people than do heroin, cocaine or even alcohol, it's advertised constantly and the government does almost nothing about that. Why is that?

Perhaps that's because Big Sugar has so much economic and political power.

Soft drink ads outside a
store in Bogotá.

Yet, paradoxically, in the last couple of years the percent of children suffering acute malnutrition shot up from 0.9% to 2.3%. That could be because children as switching from a traditional diet high in fruits and vegetables to a diet high in processed, sugary foods. The malnutrition was particularly high among indigenous children, whose bodies are not prepared for the sweet, processed food diet they adopt when they come into contact with Western culture.

Soft drink workers protest a proposed tax.

When several Colombian NGOs recently tried to educate consumers about sugar's damages, and a sugar tax was proposed, sugar producers fought back, as detailed in the New York Times. After the Educar Consumidores foundation prepared a television ad linking sugary drinks to obesity and diabetes, soda maker Postobon sued and got the ad removed from television, because it was supposedly 'scientifically imprecise' - and even got a judge to prohibit Educar officials from speaking publicly about the link between sugar and diabetes, according to the Times.  I wonder whether media ever asked soft drink companies to prove their ads' messages that sugary drinks will make you happy and popular, or tobacco makers' messages that smoking would make you sexy. (The Constitutional Court later reversed the judge's ruling.)

A lonely sight: An anti-sugar billboard.

Ironically, it was the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce, supposedly a consumer-protection agency, which got the health ad banned.

Educar's director was also hit with criminal charges for a humorous blog post about sugar, and the
organization's staff reported harrasment, including computer and cellphone problems they suspected were caused by spyware. None of the problems were proven to be linked to the sugary food makers, who deny any wrongdoing.

But what Big Sugar unquestionably did do was flood Colombia's Congress with nearly 100 lobbyists to fight against a proposed sugar tax, an unprecedented political onslaught.

Meanwhile, reports Semana magazine, another NGO, Red Papaz, created a series of ads criticizing

Obesity in Colombian children
has increased in recent years,
and children get fatter
as they get older.

advertising directed at children and urging parents to consider the health impacts of sugary foods. The ads were rejected by some media companies, which claimed that they lacked scientific evidence. (Again, it would be interesting to see how much evidence they seek when companies claim that their car or clothing or deoderant will make you sexy, beautiful or a great athlete.)

"The private stations won't show our commercial," the director of Red Papaz said. "We understand that this is obviously due to industry interests."

The sugar industry doesn't lack influence in media or government. The same conglomerate which owns Postobón also owns RCN Television and radio, and an industry lawyer once headed the nation's consumer protection agency.

Despite its huge size and influence, the sugar industry tries to make us believe that it's the defender of the little guy, such as the corner shopkeeper, who makes part of his income by selling candy, sugary drinks and other vices, such as cigarettes. However, it's a deceptive argument. If Colombians were persuaded to stop paying money to sicken themselves, they'd still spend that money - but maybe on better things, such as clothing, soccer balls and schoolbooks, not to mention fruits and vegetables.

My advice to Big Sugar is not to worry. Fast foods and junk foods and their advertising are so prevalent that we can't escape. And Red Papaz's campaign is sadly insignificant and poorly designed.

I happened to spot a Red Papaz ad link on The New York Times' website. How many Colombians,

Big cola, big calories.

particularly overweight Colombian children, read the Times? I also spotted one anti-sugar billboard high above Calle 26. In contrast, nearly every store features posters pushing candy and soft drinks, along crowded Carrera Septima, young people wearing billboards hand out flyers for McDonald's treats, and seemingly every corner in Bogotá hosts a street vendor hawking candies and cigarettes.

With saturation advertising like that, health education doesn't stand a chance.

The New York Times just published a big report about the North America Free Trade Agreement's destructive inflluence on Mexicans' health. Prominent in that is the Oxxo junk food store chain, a leading purveyor of sugary, salty and highly processed foods (not to mention alcohol) in Mexico, and which is proliferating fast in Colombia. There are already about a half-dozen Oxxos just in La Candelaria.

Afterthought: All of this is actually an argument in favor of prohibitionism. Prohibitionism hasn't stopped the consumption of drugs, sex or alcohol - but it does at least clamp down on the advertising of such 'vices.'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Profits of Obesity

Cases of sugary soft drinks for sale.

We all know that obesity causes diabetes, heart disease and even cancer, as well as myriad other diseases, making it one of the biggest preventable killers.

However, other people know something else about obesity: There's lots of money in it.

That's why a phalanx of economic heavyweights are lobbying hard against a proposal to increase Colombia's tax on sugary soft drinks.

Big companies like Coke, Pepsi, the Oxxo junk food chain, and supermarkets all earn fortunes every year by pushing empty calories onto us. However, judging by the statements of Fenalco, Colombia's National Federation of Businesses, you might think that all they cared about were the 'little people'.

A tax on soft drinks, Fenalco warns, will cause layoffs in bottling plants, hurt mom-and-pop corner

Soft drink industry workers protest a new tax on Plaza Bolivar.

stores and disproportionately cost poor families. While there may be some truth to those assertions, you'd be forgiven if you smelled hypocrisy in the corporate statements. After all, these same soft drink companies are happily working with the chain stores which are trying hard to drive those mom-and-pop groceries out of business. And I'm sure that those bottlers now crying over the fate of their hourly workers are doing their best to cut costs by automating those same workers out of their jobs. And those rich companies which express so much concern about the poor are happy to sell those same poor people harmful junk food they can't afford.

And whose to say that whatever money the poor don't spend on soft drinks won't be spent instead on healthier fruits, breads and even school books? Poor people tend to spend their limited money quickly. So that will generate other, different jobs.

Obesity is a growing problem in Colombia.

Fenalco is also correct when it claims that a soda tax won't end obesity. But it might reduce it, at least a little bit.

And tax critics are also correct in saying that all sugary foods should be taxed equally, and I'm at a loss as to why they don't just tax sugar at its source - perhaps because the sugar lobby is just too strong. But taxing soft drinksis, at leastt, a start.

The corporations have good reason for concern. In Mexico, California and other places soda taxes have been shown to decrease consumption. By the same token, higher cigarette taxes reduce smoking, especially among children, which is why it's good that the reform will also increase the cigarrette tax.

The lobbies against tax hikes on soft drinks, cigarettes and other harmful products are classic

The Oxxo junk food chain pushes soft drinks.

examples of vested interests fighting to protect their fortunes - no matter the harm to their customers and society.

In a just world, companies would be required to pay the public costs caused by their products - in this case, disease, and, why not, the collection and disposal of all those discarded empty bottles.

Pushing 'double sweet' treats outside a McDonald's in La Candelaria.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Modernizing Colombians to Death

Colombians appear bent on adopting the ways of life of those oh-so-admirable 'modern' developed nations. And those habits include ones which are killing people in ever greater numbers thru obesity, heart disease, cancer and hypertension - and all the other fatalities caused by unhealthy food and sedenterism.

Over the past five years the percentage of Colombians who are obese has risen abouit 25 percent. Today, more than half of Colombians are oever-weight, and in some Colombian departments beween one fifth and one-third of teenagers are overwheight, altho that's usually the case in poor rural regions.

Here's how to transform Colombia into a modern country - even if it kills us:

Replace traditional meals, like this fish restaurant's...

...with junk food like this from McDonald's.

Replace bicycling and walking...

...with auto addiction. 

Replace traditional markets of fruits and vegetables...

...with convenience stores pushing  processed foods, sugar-packed foods and alcohol.

Replace active sports, like this girls' roller hockey match...

...with sedentary activities like television and video games.

Replace fruit drinks, like these salpicones containing strawberry, watermelon and chopped fruits...

Add caption

...with soft drinks like Coca Cola. Coke may add life, but certainly affects death.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours