IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfpoli/v84y2019icp103-110.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Apparent consumption of caloric sweeteners increased after the implementation of NAFTA in Mexico

Author

Listed:
  • Unar-Munguía, Mishel
  • Monterubio Flores, Eric
  • Colchero, M.A.

Abstract

The consumption of sugar and sweeteners have been associated with obesity and diabetes, which are public health problems in Mexico. Since 1994, imports of sweeteners for the elaboration of ultra-processed food and beverages increased in the country. This increase in imports may have increased the apparent consumption of sweeteners which could be associated with the implementation of the NAFTA that gradually eliminated tariffs on sugars. However, no study has estimated trends in apparent consumption by type of sugar, and its association with NAFTA in Mexico. Therefore, we analyzed trends in apparent consumption of sugar and sweeteners, and its contribution to energy from 1961 to 2013. We assessed if the gradual implementation of NAFTA in 1994, 1998, 2003 and 2008 was associated with changes in the consumption of sugar and sweeteners in Mexico using the Food Balance Sheet data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. We estimated an interrupted time series analysis with synthetic controls using OECD countries, to assess the association between NAFTA and changes in the type of sugar consumed. We found that between 1961 and 2013, the contribution of sugars to daily energy increased from 243 to 456 (243 to 456 kcal/capita/day). Until 1993, the consumption of sweeteners was 0.20 kg/capita/year and in 2013 reached 12.9 kg/capita/year, representing 20% of total sugar consumption. The consumption of sweeteners increased 2.93 kcal/capita/day after the NAFTA was implemented in 1994. However, there was a reduction in apparent consumption of −2.95 kcal/capita/day between 1998 and 2002, concurrent with the implementation of a 12.5% ad valorem compensatory duty to high fructose corn syrup imports from the US. Consumption increased again 7.7 kcal/capita/day between 2003 and 2007 and up to 10.4 kcal/capita/day after 2008 when the NAFTA was fully implemented. We found a significant increase in the apparent consumption of sweeteners associated with NAFTA but we did not find a conclusive evidence when we estimates total sugars and sweeteners together because we lacked an adequate control group. Sweeteners are mainly used for producing beverages and processed food, so its consumption should be discouraged by improving the existing package of interventions in Mexico, including a 20–30% increase to current taxes that have proven to be effective to reduce sugar sweetened beverages and nonessential energy dense food but whose existing rates are relatively small; improving front of package labelling, monitoring compliance in school regulations for food and beverages sold and improving marketing regulations directed to children.

Suggested Citation

  • Unar-Munguía, Mishel & Monterubio Flores, Eric & Colchero, M.A., 2019. "Apparent consumption of caloric sweeteners increased after the implementation of NAFTA in Mexico," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 103-110.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:84:y:2019:i:c:p:103-110
    DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2019.03.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919218303828
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.foodpol.2019.03.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Beghin, John C. & Jensen, Helen H., 2008. "Farm policies and added sugars in US diets," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 480-488, December.
    2. Sano, Daisuke & House, Lisa & Spreen, Thomas H., 2004. "Analysis of the U.S.-Mexico Sugar Trade - 10 Years of NAFTA Regime and 10 Years from Now," 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO 20024, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    3. David Stuckler & Martin McKee & Shah Ebrahim & Sanjay Basu, 2012. "Manufacturing Epidemics: The Role of Global Producers in Increased Consumption of Unhealthy Commodities Including Processed Foods, Alcohol, and Tobacco," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(6), pages 1-8, June.
    4. Ariel Linden, 2015. "Conducting interrupted time-series analysis for single- and multiple-group comparisons," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 15(2), pages 480-500, June.
    5. Schmitz, Troy G. & Lewis, Karen E., 2015. "Impact of NAFTA on U.S. and Mexican Sugar Markets," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 40(3), pages 1-18, September.
    6. Barlow, Pepita & McKee, Martin & Basu, Sanjay & Stuckler, David, 2017. "Impact of the North American free trade agreement on high-fructose corn syrup supply in Canada: a natural experiment using synthetic control methods," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102665, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ajewole, Kayode & Beckman, Jayson & Gerval, Adam & Johnson, William & Morgan, Stephen & Sabala, Ethan, 2022. "Do Free Trade Agreements Benefit Developing Countries? An Examination of U.S. Agreements," USDA Miscellaneous 329076, United States Department of Agriculture.
    2. Daniela Soleri & David Arthur Cleveland & Flavio Aragón Cuevas & Violeta Jimenez & May C. Wang, 2023. "Traditional Foods, Globalization, Migration, and Public and Planetary Health: The Case of Tejate , a Maize and Cacao Beverage in Oaxacalifornia," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, January.
    3. Gilbert, Rachel & Costlow, Leah & Matteson, Julia & Rauschendorfer, Jakob & Krivonos, Ekaterina & Block, Steven A. & Masters, William A., 2024. "Trade policy reform, retail food prices and access to healthy diets worldwide," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    4. Bartłomiej Bajan & Natalia Genstwa & Luboš Smutka, 2021. "The similarity of food consumption patterns in selected EU countries combined with the similarity of food production and imports," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 67(8), pages 316-326.
    5. Esperanza Arnés & Marta Astier, 2019. "Handmade Comal Tortillas in Michoacán: Traditional Practices along the Rural-Urban Gradient," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-18, September.
    6. Barlow, Pepita & Sanap, Rujuta & Garde, Amandine & Winters, L. Alan & Mabhala, Mzwandile A. & Thow, Anne Marie, 2022. "Reassessing the health impacts of trade and investment agreements: a systematic review of quantitative studies, 2016–20," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113791, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Gračner, Tadeja, 2021. "Bittersweet: How prices of sugar-rich foods contribute to the diet-related disease epidemic in Mexico," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Troy G. Schmitz, 2018. "Impact of the 2014 Suspension Agreement on sugar between the United States and Mexico," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(1), pages 55-69, January.
    2. van Schalkwyk, May C.I. & Barlow, Pepita & Siles-Brügge, Gabriel & Jarman, Holly & Hervey, Tamara & McKee, Martin, 2021. "Brexit and trade policy: an analysis of the governance of UK trade policy and what it means for health and social justice," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 110261, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. KAMKOUM, Arnaud Cedric, 2023. "The Federal Reserve’s Response to the Global Financial Crisis and its Effects: An Interrupted Time-Series Analysis of the Impact of its Quantitative Easing Programs," Thesis Commons d7pvg, Center for Open Science.
    4. Dave, Dhaval & Doytch, Nadia & Kelly, Inas Rashad, 2016. "Nutrient intake: A cross-national analysis of trends and economic correlates," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 158-167.
    5. Giuntella, Osea & Rieger, Matthias & Rotunno, Lorenzo, 2020. "Weight gains from trade in foods: Evidence from Mexico," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    6. Drew M. Anderson & David B. Monaghan & Jed Richardson, 2024. "Can the Promise of Free Education Improve College Attainment? Lessons from the Milwaukee Area Technical College Promise," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 65(8), pages 1747-1770, December.
    7. Colin D Butler, 2019. "Philanthrocapitalism: Promoting Global Health but Failing Planetary Health," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-20, March.
    8. Adu, Derick T. & Li, Wenying & Sawadgo, Wendiam P.M., 2023. "Estimating the unintended impact of the North American free trade agreement on U.S. public health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    9. Glauber, Joseph W. & Effland, Anne, 2016. "United States agricultural policy: Its evolution and impact:," IFPRI discussion papers 1543, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    10. Samba Diop & Simplice A. Asongu, 2022. "The impact of Covid-19 and Russia-Ukraine war on food prices in fragile countries: misfortunes never come singly," Working Papers 22/055, European Xtramile Centre of African Studies (EXCAS).
    11. Melissa Neuman & Ichiro Kawachi & Steven Gortmaker & SV Subramanian, 2014. "National Economic Development and Disparities in Body Mass Index: A Cross-Sectional Study of Data from 38 Countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(6), pages 1-18, June.
    12. Díaz, Juan-José & Sánchez, Alan & Diez-Canseco, Francisco & Jaime Miranda, J. & Popkin, Barry M., 2023. "Employment and wage effects of sugar-sweetened beverage taxes and front-of-package warning label regulations on the food and beverage industry: Evidence from Peru," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    13. Meenan, Richard T. & Frank, Lawrence D. & Saelens, Brian E. & Young, Deborah R. & Kuntz, Jennifer L. & Dickerson, John F. & Wali, Behram & Keast, Erin M. & Fortmann, Stephen P., 2022. "Effects of an urban light rail line on health care utilization and cost: A pre-post assessment," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 112-120.
    14. Alston, Julian M. & Mullally, Conner C. & Sumner, Daniel A. & Townsend, Marilyn & Vosti, Stephen A., 2009. "Likely effects on obesity from proposed changes to the US food stamp program," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 176-184, April.
    15. Elvina Merkaj & Raffaella Santolini, 2021. "National Policies In Response To The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Case Of Friuli-Venezia-Giulia And Umbria," Working Papers 456, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    16. Goryakin, Yevgeniy & Lobstein, Tim & James, W. Philip T. & Suhrcke, Marc, 2015. "The impact of economic, political and social globalization on overweight and obesity in the 56 low and middle income countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 67-76.
    17. Alexander Karaivanov & Dongwoo Kim & Shih En Lu & Hitoshi Shigeoka, 2022. "COVID-19 vaccination mandates and vaccine uptake," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(12), pages 1615-1624, December.
    18. Adriana Hernandez Santana & Sharyl Waleska Bodden Andrade & Dina Rojas Aleman & Jean Pierre Enríquez & Adriana Beatriz Di Iorio, 2020. "Evaluation of the Nutritional Quality of Processed Foods in Honduras: Comparison of Three Nutrient Profiles," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(19), pages 1-17, September.
    19. Ritter, Patricia I., 2023. "Soda expansion in the tropics: The effect on obesity rates among women without piped water at home," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    20. Sutherland, Alex & Ariel, Barak & Farrar, William & De Anda, Randy, 2017. "Post-experimental follow-ups—Fade-out versus persistence effects: The Rialto police body-worn camera experiment four years on," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 110-116.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:84:y:2019:i:c:p:103-110. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/foodpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.