Traditional Diet Key to Mexico's Obesity Crisis Carolina Gomez Mena - La Jornada
go to original February 21, 2013

One key to abating the crisis of obesity and overweight in the country is "a return to the Mexican diet" with the adequate rations that our ancestors were accustomed to, and banishment of fast food with its "Jumbos, Macs, Combos and Megas that have altered our healthy portions"; thus changing the phenotype of most Mexicans for accumulation of body fat, declared specialists in traditional gastronomy and overweight.

At the presentation of the book Mamá papá, no quiero estar gordito ["Mom, Dad, I don't want to be fat"], written by food and nutrition expert María Baez Vales, Gloria López Morales, president of the Conservatory of Mexican Gastronomic Culture, said that campaigns like the National Crusade Against Hunger being launched by the federal government would have to have a "focus" on promoting consumption of traditional Mexican food.

"I have not heard in this Crusade any talk of the Mexican diet. Those who promote this Crusade Against Hunger are very far from realizing that we should not speak of abstractions. The fear is that all this may fall into the temptation to make charity and just try to alleviate problems. When we talk about a return to the Mexican diet, we are also speaking of stimulating courses of study in agriculture and national gastronomy."

Rafael Álvarez, head of the Program for Preventing and Combating Obesity, Overweight and Eating Disorders run by the Secretariat of Health in Mexico City, explained that "we are a country of fat people", and he emphasized that in the past six years, more people died from diabetes linked to obesity than from violence. The surgeon, also honorary president of the Mexican Association of Surgery for Obesity and Metabolic Diseases, pointed out that in the last federal administration, "70,000 people died" from the insecurity, but more than "500,000 died from diabetes".

See Spanish original

Posted by Jane Brundage at Mexico Voices

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