The epidemic has spread in Mexico between 1988 and 2012: obesity-related diabetes. These are not people who are fatter than aesthetic standards, but people who are too fat or even obese (obesity).

Of the 122 million people in Mexico, 48 are oversized, of which 22 million are obese and between 6.5 and 10 million are diabetic. 7% of the population suffers from diabetes, 21% of the population over 65. At the same time, the epidemic has also become hypertension.

At the same time, paradoxically, 78% of Mexicans have problems accessing daily food, suffer from food insecurity in a more severe or lighter way. One in ten children going to school suffers from anemia. This is data provided by the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico in 2012.

What has changed in recent years? In 1994, with the complete liberalization of trade between the United States and Mexico, Mexican customs have changed radically and at the same time have reduced the chances of getting their dishes from time to time. This is the explanation taken by the GRAIN organization, which claims sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty in its report “Free trade and the epidemic of junk food in Mexico”.

“This data cannot be understood – in the March report by dager GRAIN – as some say ‘people eat differently because today they have more possibilities’. The thing is that some foods have been imposed on the people, and in the meantime, people so far can more and more easily buy the foods they take care of and produce according to real uses and needs.”

The UN Special Correspondent on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schuter, said in 2012 on the Mexican alarm call: “Today’s trade policies encourage the presence of people undergoing very processed, refined and prepared foods to stay on the shelves for a long time, increasingly avoiding the consumption of fresh, easy-to-lose foods, especially fruits and vegetables.” The main change that occurred was in 1994, when Mexico signed with the United States the treaty of liberalization in Spanish NAFTA and English NAFTA.

The pact paved the way for American corporations to invest all the money they wanted in Mexico’s projects. If in 1982 the Yankees invested US$ 210 million in food production companies, in 1999 they entered US$ 5.3 billion: for 25. Most investments have been made in processed foods.

Sales have multiplied in the same way, mainly in products called junk food or zahorra: pastries, dairy, sandwich, hamburger... and sweet beverages, cola and six hundred. When 273 bottles of one quarter of a litre per person per year were consumed in 1992, they reached 487 in 2002.

To address the obvious health problem, in 2014 the Mexican government imposed an 8% tax on foods with many calories, including those that carry peanut butter and famous breakfast cereals. Soft drinks also have a tribute of a weight (about six cents of euro). But this has not changed much the consumption of the issues that damage the health of Mexicans.

Goodbye, small store

The trash tax has not worried the owners of the hypermarkets, who control Mexico’s distribution network too well. Shops that never close, hypermarkets and specialized discounts at low prices came in 2004 from 700 to 5,729 in 1997. Still, in Mexico, more than 400,000 small shops remained open, small 10-square-meter stalls. Exciting for the hunger of corporations.

At first, big corporations have spread through small shops what in South America they call junk food. Like a flood, these sweet foods and beverages invented for mass consumption were disseminated. At a very low price, moreover, because each corporation distributes products from different sections, optimizing transport costs.

Then there was the replacement of the last seller, that small shops should be eaten up by ever-larger chains. The Oxxo chain, a subsidiary of Coca Cola, reached 3,500 stores in 2004, in 2012 it had 10,000 and by 2015 it has to end the year with more than 14,000, opening three new stores every day.

Oxxo's competitors are currently the Soriana chain. And ahead, by far, the world's largest distribution network, Walmart. With low wages in the South of the United States, Mexico is a leader in the production of processed foods. Now that it has become the owner of the distribution network, corporations have managed to get their food imposed on the diet and life of Mexicans.

They spend large sums on propaganda and public relations operations to justify the serious problems caused by their own sold foods. “Throughout Mexico,” says GRAIN, “advertising unites corporations with the values that citizens love: family, sustainability, charity, good health, quality employment... They are very interested in showing that they are collaborating with the governments of Mexico, and, interestingly, the governments are also doing so.”

In 2013, Nestle and Pepsi organized the Hunger Crusade with the island’s authorities. Nestlé has launched an operation called My Sweet Business, to empower women and turn them into entrepreneurs, to organize a small army of 15,000 women who will sell pastries and sweets based on Nestle products.

All cosmetics, says GRAIN. “They have long understood that food transnationals have the best markets to increase their sales in the south of the planet. To do so, they have to invent, develop and sell products for millions of poor people in the world. These people have so far been fed the food they have produced on site and the informal markets they have organized to make a living.”

Corporations to engage these consumers in the network initially satisfy traditional distribution channels and then replace local food with cheap, processed, junk food, often in collaboration with local governments.

Treaties such as the TTIP, which are now intended to apply to Europeans, which promote trade and investment without borders, are decisive for the markets to catch up and replace the multinationals in order to increase their profits. Mexico shows the crude and dark panorama that this policy brings to the citizens.