Recently, Health Secretary Mercedes Juan warned that it would take 30 years to reverse the trend of overweight and obesity among Mexican children. We must ask ourselves whether the anti-obesity strategy in recent years has produced tangible results. The national strategy defined by the Health Secretariat is based on three pillars: public health, medical care, and sanitary and fiscal regulation.
On one hand, we have this strategy so “perfectly” delineated, practically limited to one or two sectors; meanwhile, around the world, a large part of the scientific community recognizes that understanding the phenomenon—from its genetic, physiological, economic, psychological, social, and cultural mechanisms—remains insufficient. When analyzing the strategy, one might realize that actions aimed at reducing obesity require more than dietary recommendations and the promotion of physical activity.
If obesity were a one-dimensional phenomenon, health and nutrition education campaigns carried out by various health ministries worldwide would have already had a considerable and sustained effect. So, what is the missing link in the fight against obesity? Even more, are we truly fighting obesity or merely patching the hole?
Until a few decades ago, public health policy was not characterized by prevention. How can we explain that in a country of millions, people living with hunger and poverty coexist, that a few years ago the most disadvantaged classes suffered from malnutrition and today suffer from obesity? Is obesity itself ruining our lives? Or are obesity and hunger extremes of the same evil—a continuum of dysfunctional eating?
When we understand the condition of obese individuals as a multifactorial and multicausal problem, we realize that participation from the health sector alone is not enough. Coordinated intersectoral actions are needed to define a true public policy aimed not just at reducing obesity prevalence, but at ensuring the well-being of Mexicans.
Obesity is not exclusively a genetic problem—genes, at most, influence up to 30% of the condition’s development according to the WHO—nor is it solely an issue of energy expenditure and consumption. People eat not only out of hunger, but also to celebrate, negotiate, establish bonds, for joy, sadness, because others eat or don’t eat... The fight against obesity cannot be reduced to taxation or discouraging certain consumption; it must include support for research to understand the behavior behind choices and the creation of habits within our own sociocultural context.
Combating obesity means guaranteeing favorable conditions for the physical and mental development of the population; creating the right conditions so that the food a person provides for themselves and their family brings well-being that involves more than good nutrition; offering public spaces with conditions that allow a person to confidently engage in physical activity. It means providing ideal transportation conditions to discourage the use of the almighty automobile. It is prevention from the earliest ages, with programs that foster not only good nutrition but also healthy relationships with food, satisfaction and personal happiness, as well as social values of coexistence. The list of actions seems endless and utopian, but we have to start somewhere.
On one hand, it is assumed that if citizens are “educated” about good eating habits, these will automatically be implemented in their daily lives as if by osmosis, as a rational and calculated act. On the other hand, it is assumed that this same citizen is incapable of making healthy life choices; a paternalistic policy is required to promote taxes to discourage the consumption of certain products, which, incidentally, are already established as habits.
We must therefore reconsider not only the coherence of the State’s role, but also the participation of various sectoral bodies in promoting well-being. Without losing sight of the global picture, there are some zooms we have yet to consider, and which we will address in this space.
Liliana Martínez Lomelí is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Gastronaut, food hunter, amateur cook, researcher by vocation.
Originally published in El Economista
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— This article was originally published in Spanish by Liliana Martínez Lomelí. Translation generated with AI from the original text.