It’s time to stop the great food heist powered by big business. That means taxation, regulation and healthy school meals | Stuart Gillespie

S.Your diet kills us. It is designed in a different century for a different purpose – to produce cheap calories to prevent famine – and is now a source of danger, Destroy more than it creates. A quarter of all adult deaths worldwide – more than 12 million every year Because of the low diets.

Malnutrition in all its forms-deficiency of nutrition, deficiency of microorganisms, weight gain and obesity-is considered the biggest cause of bad health, which affects one in three people on this planet. Very advanced foods are involved in up to the number of foods One in seven early deaths In some countries.

Each country is affected by malnutrition, but it is the poorest and most marginalized is likely to have malnutrition, disease and death very soon. Our diet also raises our planet – generation A third of greenhouse gas emissions And lead a set of environmental damage.

With economies growth, countries move from low-productive rural agricultural systems-which focus on foodstuffs-to more diverse systems, including legumes and nutrient foods, and to commercial systems, immersed in highly treated foods.

The global north began to move during this food transition in the middle of the last century – about three generations. Many countries in Latin America and Asia took the same trip in only one generation Africa is now more obese because it turns into high -end foods.

The global diet has been captured by a few transnational companies that benefit from public health while using a set of tactics to stop governments on their way. When it is seen from the Power Perspective, this is more like stealing than the nutritional transition.

We need to turn the system into a system in which priority is given to the health of people and the planet higher than an uncompromising engine for profit. It is too late for additional change, further change, and switching on the margin – we need radical repair.

Everyone has a role in changing matters but we need to lead governments, to determine rules and rule.

First, governments must have budgets to buy healthy foods (and reduce highly treated foods) for schools, government agencies, hospitals and clinics. In Kenya, Food4education has provided more than 21 million hot meals nourishing for school children. Tens of thousands of young children are well fed every dayAnd keep them in school and are able to learn. The Kenyan government works with the charitable organization to expand its operations to cover all schools by the end of the decade.

in BrazilThe government funds healthy meals for millions of students in public schools, which must be purchased by a third of local farmers who practice low carbon organic agriculture.

The momentum is building. School meal plans are now operating in almost every country, reaching more than 400 million children at a cost of about 48 billion dollars annually, and 108 countries that met in a world world School meals alliance.

Second, governments have the authority to organize advertisements, describe and market unhealthy foods.

For Guido Giradi, member of the Senate ChileanIt was simple: the right of children to food and health was violated through predatory marketing of highly treated foods. From 2006 to 2022, Gerardi fought against the food industry and his political colleagues to bring the organization. But Chile is now leading the world in terms of a comprehensive set of measures that include front stickers, restrictions on children’s media marketing, 18 % of taxes on sugary drinks and a ban on selling and marketing fast food in schools.

Advertise the title 2018 New York Times Tony Al -Nimr slaughtered Cartoon characters were also transferred from grain packages in Chile. Within a year, driven by these new laws, children’s exposure to ads decreased by 73 %. Within three years, calorie consumption, salt and sugar decreased from organized products throughout the country by a third. Nutritional stickers are now at the front of the package on products in Peru, Israel, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, with others in the pipeline in Africa and Asia.

The third procedure requires fears of taxes and subsidies. Governments can not coordinate to purchase unhealthy foods (by imposing taxes on harmful products) with tax profits allocated to stimulate healthier food purchases, such as subsidies for low -income families.

In Mexico, the idea of ​​providing a tax on diabetic drinks was discussed for several years in 2010, after the public health disaster for Vicente Fox, former CEO of Coca -Cola in Latin America. In a classic case of the rotating door between the public office and the private sector, Fox had brought his friends from Coca -Cola to operate the main departments In 2000, Coca-Cola sales entered largely after the packing concessions were included and three times and the water was absorbed from the groundwater layers.

By 2006, one of every six adults in Mexico was suffering from diabetesWith 40,000 deaths per year attributed to excessive consumption in soft drinks. Despite the strong retreat of the beverage industry, in 2014, a new government launched the world’s first sugary drink. Two years later, The sales of these drinks decreased by 12 %While water sales increased by a similar rate. The greatest benefit was seen in the poorest families.

Taxes work. More than 120 countries cover more than half of the world’s population began to implement. It is a huge global success story that has now been extended beyond sugary drinks. It was Colombia The first country in Latin America to provide a tax on super treatment productsIn November 2023. These interventions work, and when they are joined in a comprehensive national policy, with the support of many government departments, it can be transformative.

Our global diet does not fed us. The good news is that we now know the reason, and we know enough to change things. We need to harness a growing group of evidence and experience from all over the world to push us forward in the future of better food – one with people and the planet in his heart.