(2 Apr 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mexico City – 31 March 2025
1. Relatives waiting to pick up children from school; junk food stand in foreground
2. Street vendors looking after stand selling junk food in front of school
3. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Brenda Gonzalez, 36, parent:
"We had been asked that (the children) bring healthy food, that the parents should provide them with a healthy lunch. But then the children come here and they can buy junk food. And obviously, as children, they choose the junk food over the food they bring from home."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mexico City – 1 April 2025
4. People walking past sign reading (Spanish): "Gummies and snacks — 5 pesos ($0.25) the bag"
5. Gummies on display
6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Liliana Bahena Espino, activist at NGO The Power of the Consumer:
++QUALITY AS INCOMING ++
++VIDEO CALL++
"In Mexico, we have a serious public health problem. Already 40% of children and adolescents live with obesity and 50% will develop diabetes in early adulthood."
7. Close of potato chips being fried
8. Close of street vendor chopping pork
9. Banner at street stand reading (Spanish), "Mexican snacks"
10. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Dr. Martha Kaufer Horwitz, head of Mexico’s Institute of Health Sciences and Nutrition:
"The current guidelines do include monitoring strategies, which is also very interesting because that is what was missing the last time (a junk food ban was attempted) — that there is real monitoring and that (non-compliance) is corrected."
11. Various close of black warning logos on junk food packages
12. Various of children with backpacks walking
STORYLINE:
A government-sponsored junk food ban in schools across Mexico took effect on Saturday, as the country tries to tackle one of the world’s worst obesity and diabetes epidemics.
The health guidelines, first published last fall, take a direct shot at salty and sweet processed products that have become a staple for generations of Mexican schoolchildren, such as sugary fruit drinks, packaged chips, artificial pork rinds and soy-encased, chili-flavored peanuts.
Mexico’s ambitious attempt to remake its food culture and reprogram the next generation of consumers is being watched closely around the world as governments struggle to turn the tide on a global obesity epidemic.
Under Mexico’s new order, schools must phase out any food and beverage displaying even one black warning logo marking it as high in salt, sugar, calories and fat.
Mexico implemented that compulsory front-of-package labeling system in 2020.
Enforced from Monday morning, the start of the school week, the junk food ban also requires schools to serve more nutritious alternatives to junk food, like bean tacos, and offer plain drinking water.
Mexico’s children consume more junk food than anywhere else in Latin America, according to UNICEF, which classifies the nation’s childhood obesity epidemic as an emergency.
Sugary drinks and highly processed foods account for 40% of the total calories that children consume in a day, the agency reports.
One-third of Mexican children are already considered overweight or obese, according to government statistics.
School administrators found in violation of the order face stiff fines, ranging from $545 to $5,450.
But enforcement poses a challenge in a country where previous junk food bans have struggled to gain traction and monitoring has been lax across Mexico’s 255,000 schools, many of which lack water fountains — even reliable internet and electricity.
AP Video shot by Martín Silva Rey and India Grant
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