Innumerable Oxxos

An Oxxo about to open in Las Aguas, beside the Plaza del Periodista.

Get your junk food fix here: An Oxxo
window on 19th street.

Beside La Plaza del Periodista, a new Oxxo appears. There's already one on the other side of the plaza, as well as another down 19th St., as well as a half-dozen more around La Candelaria.

Is there no limit to the market for the sort of refined, high-fat, high-salt and alchoholic fare which Oxxo specializes in?

Buy doritos!

Most likely, Oxxo's plan is to take away from the neighborhood stores this vice segment of the industry  - which I imagine is also the most profitable segment. Once they've lost their most profitable sales, the family-run stores will die, depriving the neighborhood of the healthy fruits and vegetables they sell, but which are too troublesome for Oxxo to bother with. This produces what in the U.S. is called a 'healthy food desert.'

But taking sales from the traditional stores can't be the whole story. The market for things which ruin

A family-run neighborhood shop, featuring
fruits and vegetables.

our health, like sugar, salt and fat-packed foods, tobacco and etc., must be pretty elastic. Push fat, salt, sweets and alchohol in people's (and particularly children's) faces and - surprise, surprise - they'll buy more of them.

Who wins? Oxxo and the junk food industry, and Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionare who owns the chain.

Who loses? Our health.

Across the plaza, another Oxxo.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Let The Homeless Eat Cake - or Starve!

An anti-social act? Giving food to a
homeless old man in Bogotá.
(Photo: El Banquete del Bronx)

Chalk this one up on the list of brilliant contributions to the public good by our city government:

Food donations to the homeless must meet high hygenic standards - or the hungry don't eat!

According to one police official, the new Police Code sanctions the distribution of food that doesn't have a sanitary registration - whatever that is. Perhaps a five-star restaurant, or at least a Juan Valdez, for the homeless?

The police also claim that distributing food to the homeless can cause fights and even homicides. A strange idea, which only makes one wonder what will happen if these people DON'T get food: Will they simply starve to death silently?

Anyway, what sort of hygenic standards do the homeless people's meals comply with when they DON'T receive handouts from churches and other groups? Take a look:

A homeless man searches thru trash for things to eat or sell. 

Does the food he'll find here have a sanitation registry?

Damnit! This pizza I found is past its sell-by date.

And pity the charitable folks who want to help the homeless - but are afraid of getting punished for doing so!

This is yet another example of government officials' urge to control everything they can, and their lack of empathy for those actually living in the real world.

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

Yacón, the Incredible Edible Vegetable

Offering yacón in farmer's market.

A big tuber.

You've probably seen carts of them for sale on the street or in bins in traditional markets. They don't look particularly appetizing - the color of potatoes, but not nearly as shapely.

However, yacón, a tuber native to the eastern slopes of the Andes from Colombia to Argentina, but until relatively recently known mostly in Peru, might just be the West's Next Big Super Food.

Altho it could pass for yucca and arracacia, other Andean root vegetables, which must be cooked, yacón is eaten raw, like an apple, is a bit crunchy and has a mild sweet flavor, which grows stronger the longer it sits around.  The sweetness comes from a fructooligosaccharide molecule, which certainly sounds delicious. However, the fructooligosaccharide happens to be an indigestible polysaccharide consisting of fructose, so yacón is a non-caloric sweetener, according to Wikipedia. The vegetable is also supposed to be good for digestion and blood sugar issues, making yacón products popular among diabetics. In Paloquemao Market they sell it as curatodo (cure for everything).

A cure for everything? Cancer, gastritis,
digestion and to shrink the beer belly.

Until recently, I'd only heard of yacón being eaten fresh or blended into a smoothie. But at a farmer's market the other day I tried yacón bread (filled with guanabana) and even yacón yogurt.

During the last decade or so, yacón, a close relative of the sunflower, has been cultivated on a small scale in Australia, Japan and other parts of Asia.

Yacón breads.

Tasting yacón yogurt.

Yacón plants. (Photo from Wikipedia)

Yacón - cures everything!

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Sad Snack in Independence Park

Today I came upon what should have been a purely cheery scene in Parque de la Independencia: a bunch of kids on a school outing. Then I noticed what they were eating. Chips, soda pop, candies. Here and there a sandwich. Not an apple, orange or a banana in sight. If it it's not highly-processed and doesn't come out of a plastic package, these kids won't touch it.

In two decades a lot of these kids will be fighting obesity, diabetes, even heart disease. And then who'll be to blame? The school? Their parents?

In addition to junk food's health damage, it also maximizes the volume of trash produced.

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

Erasing a Local Landmark?

Entrance to the Mercado de Egipto. 

The Egipto neighborhood's traditional market has operated for about as long as anybody can remember. It provides fresh, healthful fruits and vegetables, jobs for locals, income for campesinos and location for community events (such as this Sunday's mass for the Virgen del Carmen).

A woman who has sold in the market for about
40 years, as her mother did before her.
'I'm too old to move, she said.)

But water authorities plan to close the historic market, ending a neighborhood institution, with little public consultation or concern for those affected.

According to what I've heard second and third hand, Bogotá acueducto officials - the people who manage the city's water supply - are concerned about the stability of the market, which is built above the San Agustin River. Supposedly, the river is weakening the market's foundation. The officials' solution is to shut the market and send the vendors somewhere else.

On Sundays the market becomes more active, and
campesinos come from the countryside to sell chickens
and other things. 

But the people who sell in the Egipto Market are very modest people who live nearby and do not want to pay bus fare to sell in an unfamiliar place far from home. And the alternative market I've most heard mentioned - Mercado La Concordia in La Candelaria, has barely enough customers to support the sole fruit vendor there now. Egipto's vendors would starve there.

Egipto's vendors wonder what possible danger there can be, since the market is set on soil and the
river flows under its edge, apparently inside a pipeline (the huge amount of vegetation makes it impossible to see). If soil under the market were to shift, it seems to me that it would happen slowly, giving plenty of time to evacuate or take countermeasures.

A cheese vendor.

What strikes me most about this situation is the way the city seems willing to destroy a local landmark, a piece of local tradition and culture, without a second thot - even while foreign chain stores hawking junk food sprout like mushrooms across Bogotá - most likely tax breaks and subsidies meant to encourage foreign investment.

"I'm too old to move," a 56-year-old vegetable vendor, who has worked in the market since she was fourteen, as did her mother before her.

But city authorities don't seem very concerned.

The San Agustin River's overgrown ravine behind the Mercado de Egipto. Note the probably illegally homes on the ravine's edge. 

Years ago, the market was located on the corner in front of the church. The market was located due to road work. Today, perhaps it could move back. 

Thumbs up. 

A poster nearby headlines the market's original name, El Mercado de Rumichaca. 

Cheese for sale.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

My Latest Anti-Anti-Transgenics Tirade

'They're invading us.'

These very sincere folks were demonstrating on Ave. Septima today against transgenic seeds, which they claim are destroying everything from Colombia's seed diversity to everybody's health.

The fear of transgenic organisms and demonization of Monsanto Corporation have become deep-rooted, self-perpetuation psychosis which is going to be with us for a long, long time.

But the specific criticisms of transgenics seem completely baseless. I asked several of today's demonstrators why they opposed transgenics. 'They're damaging our health,' they told me; added another 'We're being invaded,' and 'They're manipulating our food.'

'Because of love for life.'

Except that humans have been manipulating their food genetically for at least the past 10,000 years, since agriculture began. For hundreds of thousands of years before that, nature was manipulating our food thru evolution and random genetic mutations.

Transgenic methods are faster, more dramatic and less random - but not fundamentally different.

Do transgenic techniques have dangers? Sure, just like anything else, altho they're far outweighed by the technique's potential benefits for humans and the environment. And what the protesters were objecting to: coporate agriculture, loss of traditional biodiversity and the proliferation of unhealthy, processed foods, aren't caused by transgenics but by wider economic trends like globalization, monoculture agriculture and mass marketing. Transgenic crops may have accelerated those trends, but that's all.

Free seeds now!

As for transgenic foods infiltrating your genes and creating a third eye sprout on your forehead - that's impossible. A transgenic food's genes get digested your stomach, like all proteins, and broken down into their basic building blocks. If transgenics did cause health damage, don't you think that lawsuit-happy North Americans, who've been eating transgenics for decades, somebody, at least once, would have been able to prove some harm? But they haven't.

Eating ice cream. Transgenic or not,
too much junk food is bad for you.

Transgenic crops do have environmental impacts - but many of them are positive. For example, some insects have recently begun to develop resistance to Monsanto's BT crops - and that's causing farmers to return to using old fashioned pesticides. Those pesticides are bad for the land, rivers, ocean and plants and animals, including people.

Tragically, the U.S. and other parts of the world are experiencing a wave of extintions: Bats, honeybees and many kinds of amphibians are going fast - and they're only the ones we've noticed. In the bees' case, at least, pesticides are a leading suspect.

'Monsanto out of Colombia and the planet.'

Certainly, loss of seed biodiversity and junk food are real problems - but focusing on transgenics as the villains just hides the true, fundamental threats.

But transgenics make a wonderful enemy because the concept is new and strange and in Monsanto opponents have a great big corporate villain with a strange-sounding name to attack.

By groundlessly attacking transgenics, activists are depriving many millions of people, including perhaps malnourished children in Colombia's El Choco Department, of cheaper and sometimes healthier food. Take, in particular, the insane campaign against golden rice, a transgenic seed fortified with vitamin A, which has the potential to save the lives of millions poorly-nourished children the world over - if only anti-transgenics activists quit standing between kids and their health. Opponents of Golden Rice have blood on their hands, just as surely as do the paranoics who oppose a life-saving vaccination.

'Yankee corn out of Colombia'

But, to me, the most tragic part of this is that intstead of fighting a life-saving solution, these activists could instead be fighting against the the real threats to the environment and our health which are all around us - but go ignored because their not so simplistic and exciting as fighting an imaginay boogeyman.

Can anybody say air pollution? Deforestation? Fast food and sedentarianism? Smoking? Climate change? Malaria?

Sunday's New York Times contains this tremendous commentary about how, since the beginning of agriculture, humans have selected vegetables, including corn and potatoes, to make them sweeter and softer - and much less nutritious.

Transgenics and genetic manipulation have likely accelerated this trend, a case in point being the conversion of nutritious Indian corn into low-nutrition sweet corn. But transgenics probably offer the best way to put nutrients back into vegetables.

Different kinds of potatoes, as well as corn, yucca and other fruits and vegetables in a Bogotá market. None of these are transgenic, but all undoubtedly have been genetically manipulated by farmers.

Danger - Monsanto.

'Out with Monsanto.'

Traditional seeds. 'Seeds are the real gold in life.'

'Do you know that your food could be poisoned?'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours