What Did Poncho Die Of? Education Called to Arms in Mexico's Obesity Fight Jude Webber - The Financial Times
go to original October 18, 2014

¿De Qué Murió Poncho? El primer caso de un niño de 12 años que sufre un infarto a causa de la obesidad. (Alfonso Rodríguez)

The Mexican video “What did Poncho die of?”, aired on social media, tells a horrific cautionary tale.

The almost five-minute film purports to show the moment when a grossly overweight 12-year-old, Alfonso Rodríguez, known as Poncho, collapses in his school playground, the grainy black-and-white images captured by a security camera.

Poncho dies shortly afterwards in a hospital. The film – interspersed with testimony from his parents, interviews with doctors and shots of a birthday party the day before at which he complained of feeling tired and appears breathless – concludes starkly: Poncho died of a heart attack caused by obesity.

The authenticity of the video could not be verified, but the message could not be more real: Mexico is grappling with an explosion in obesity, affecting children in particular. Indeed, the Latin American country has more obese children than anywhere else in the world.

A quarter of a century ago, two-thirds of Mexicans were of normal weight, according to official statistics. Now, about a third of the population is clinically obese, and more still are overweight – adding up to a supersized segment of adults second only to the US.

The explosion coincided with Mexicans’ embrace of US fast food alongside their beans and tortillas, plus less exercise – almost a third of children spend four hours a day in front of computer screens, for example – compounding a genetic propensity to accumulate fat, the state health service, IMSS, says.

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