Putting taxes into the diet equation
نویسنده
چکیده
“In Mexico, you can easily find people drinking refrescos (sodas) and eating tacos in the middle of the morning. On nearly every street corner you find street vendors selling sodas and fried foodstuff,” says Mónica García, a university teacher who lives in Mexico City, referring to her fellow Mexicans’ beloved snack. “People think that a taco without soda is not a real taco,” says Mónica. Sodas – bottled or canned sweetened soft drinks – have long been part of Mexican culture. The Coca-Cola Company started bottling and selling sodas in the country in 1926. Fourteen years later the first Coca-Cola vending machines were installed in Mexico City and former president, Vicente Fox, was head of Coca-Cola Mexico before taking office in 2000. “The origins of this entrenchment date back to the 1950s, when Coca-Cola began intense marketing campaigns in Mexico. By the 1970s, sodas were well established as components of daily cultural life,” writes the nutritionist and campaigner Marion Nestle in her book Soda Politics, published last year in the United States of America. García finds the statistics on her compatriots’ soda intake alarming and that is why she welcomes the 1 pesoper-litre (US$ 0.06) tax on these drinks introduced in January 2014.
منابع مشابه
Tapping the Power of Soda Taxes: A Call for Multidisciplinary Research and Broad-Based Advocacy Coalitions – A Response to the Recent Commentaries
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