Type 2 Diabetes Spending Now Consumes 1/3 Of Mexico's Social Program Budget - FT

[hatrack]

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Obesity-related illnesses are now so widespread that they are beginning to place a severe strain on the health system: the treatment of type 2 diabetes alone consumes more than one-third of the entire social security budget. Estimates suggest that within five years it will account for two-thirds. “We haven’t been able to keep up,” says Armando Barriguete, a high-ranking official at Mexico’s health ministry.

Mexico’s problem is one becoming increasingly common in poorer countries. Once confined to high income countries, obesity is now dramatically on the rise in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in urban settings, according to the World Health Organisation. Josefina Fausto, a health expert at the University of Guadalajara, says that behind the explosion in obesity in Mexico is a radical change in diet that stems from the country’s increasing insertion into the global economy.

In other words, they are eating a lot of US-inspired junk food. “A century ago, our biggest challenge was malnutrition,” she says. “Today, it is an excess of foods that are rich in cholesterol and heavy in saturated oils, sugar and salt.” The worsening diet – the health ministry claims that consumption of vegetables has dropped 30 per cent in a decade – is compounded by a seemingly insatiable appetite for soft drinks, in particular Coca-Cola.

According to the US-based soft-drinks manufacturer, Mexicans drank 573 eight US fluid ounce bottles of Coca-Cola products per capita (roughly 136 litres per person) in 2007 – by far the highest consumption in the world. In the US, the second biggest per-capita consumer, people drank a relatively modest 423 bottles in 2007

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/81779544-f6ca-11dd-8a1f-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

[spookybutt]

1. Thank you for t his! Type 2 diabetes is diet-related...Many American kids

are also getting it for the same reason. And the fast food diet is certainly the main culprit. Obesity is a Pandora's box that opens up a new set of health problems. We need to stop making it a vanity issue.

[DJ13]

2. It doesnt take "American fast foods" to cause their overweight conditions

My wife works with many immigrant women from Mexico, and their entire diet consists of breads of one sort or another.

[MADem]

3. Entonces, no mas high fructose corn syrup!!! nt

[NobleCynic]

4. Doesn't Mexican coca cola use regular sugar?

The massive consumption of sugars of any type is harmful.