Brazil & Southern Cone - December 2012 (ISSN 1741-4431)

First cigarettes and high-powered cars, now junk food. Uruguay’s congress is not only putting in place legislation to restrict the advertising of junk food in schools but it is also mooting increasing taxes on junk food in order to promote a healthier lifestyle and combat growing obesity in the country.

The senate health committee began analysing a bill on 29 November sponsored by Deputy Javier García from Alianza Nacional, a faction of the opposition Partido Nacional (PN, Blancos), promoting healthy eating in public and private schools. The bill, which was approved by the lower chamber last September, prohibits the promotion and advertising on school premises of products which are not included on the list of healthy foods produced by the public health ministry.

García, a doctor, claims that “70% of deaths in Uruguay are the result of chronic non-communicable diseases… basically cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and cancer,” in which unhealthy eating habits are a factor. One quarter of children in Uruguay are believed to be overweight or obese.

García said that he had gone down the educational route because a more generic bill would result in a much longer debate. However, Senator Ernesto Agazzi, from the Movimiento de Participación Popular (MPP) faction of the ruling Frente Amplio (FA), said that while the proposed controls in schools would be a good thing this did not go far enough.

“Perhaps we need to put a tax in place on these kinds of products to create a fund in order to help with the healthy eating of young people,” Agazzi said. He added that he recognised that it was “a delicate issue” because “to some extent it affects supply and demand, but regrettably a lot of the time low-income earners resort to eating this junk because it is cheap”. Medical evidence shows that poor people consume less healthy food and have a higher incidence of most diet-related diseases, notably cardiovascular disease.

Any generic tax on junk food will trigger a serious debate, not least over which food products should actually be defined as junk food. A starting point could be the list drawn up by the public health ministry for schools, including food products with high fat, sugar and salt contents, it deems to be unhealthy, such as crisps and other highly calorific snacks.

In order to be successful, so-called “fat taxes”, which have been implemented in several developed countries and are being mooted in more, would probably also need to be accompanied by subsidies on healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables in order to help encourage a significant shift in dietary habits.

In recent years Uruguay has introduced a number of taxes aimed at curbing the demand for products with detrimental effects on health, most notably cigarettes but also cars with larger engines, which produce more pollution.

Former president Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010), a qualified oncologist, waged a crusade against smoking during his term in office, when Uruguay became the first country in Latin America to ban smoking in enclosed public places. His government put in place legislation that required large health warnings on cigarette packets and banned the sale of those branded as “light” or “ultra light” leading to a bitter legal struggle with the tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI), which claimed that the restrictions imposed by the Uruguayan government harmed its business and violated Uruguay’s trade deal with Switzerland, where PMI is based.

• Mujica no show

President Mujica pulled out at the eleventh-hour from travelling to Cádiz, Spain, to attend the XXII Ibero-American Summit on 16 and 17 November for medical reasons. He said he had a blood clot in his right leg. The presidential doctors recommended that he remain in bed for three days while taking anticoagulant medication, fearing that the clot could cause a thrombosis. The president had a similar health issue in 2004 and recovered successfully after receiving treatment.