How low-income countries are targeted for distribution of junk food

There is a huge global battle, often covert, over what constitutes healthy food. But civil organisations in countries such as Mexico are taking on the propaganda of ‘Big Food' – and winning. HEALTH-E's KERRY CULLINAN reports.

Healthy food? It's hard for ordinary people to get an accurate picture of what this is, amid the spin and manipulation of our "choices" by food and beverage companies.

Not long ago, fat was the enemy and "fat-free" diets were in favour. It has now emerged that food manufacturers simply pumped fat-free foods with sugar, which is even worse for our health.

Food company spin doctors would have us believe that the worldwide explosion of obesity is a product of human laziness. While a lack of exercise plays a role, the key driver of obesity is the mass consumption of processed food and sugary drinks.

This has become a global trend as multinational companies selling junk food and drinks – "Big Food" - are increasingly targeting low- and middle-income countries to compensate for a loss of consumers in North America and Europe, who are becoming more health-conscious.

While US consumers cut their consumption of fizzy drinks by 25% between 1998 and 2014, the Mexican Coca-Cola bottler, FEMSA, doubled its revenue between 2008 and 2013.

Meanwhile, South Africans' annual consumption of Coca-Cola products increased from 130 items per person in 1992 to 254 in 2010.

Coca-Cola is projected to be investing over $40-billion in "emerging markets" between 2010 and 2020 – with $17-billion going into Africa alone.

Despite the negative health risks associated with calorie-dense, nutritionally-poor junk food and drinks, the multinational companies bring much-needed revenue in tough economic times and often get special government protection.

Last week, the Colombian government banned a TV advertisement warning people of the health dangers posed by sugary drinks – not because the advertisement was misleading or inaccurate.

WATCH THE AD HERE:

A division of the Colombian Ministry of Industry Commerce, the Superintendent of Industry and Commerce (SIC), ordered a civil society coalition to stop all their mass media advertising against sugary drinks.

Activists surmise that the SIC took action after pressure from Postobon, the largest beverage company in Colombia, as the SIC used Postobon’s arguments verbatim in the wording of its banning order.

In Mexico, the country’s two major television networks, Televisa and TV Azteca, refused to air advertisements showing the negative effects of sugary drinks, and advocating a tax on them.

Mexico has one of the highest consumption rates of fizzy drinks in the world – riding alongside the world’s highest rate of childhood obesity, second highest adult obesity rate and an epidemic of diabetes that cost around 87,000 lives in 2013.

There is a close association between the political elite and “Big Food”. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox was head of Coca-Cola’s Latin American operations before becoming president of the country. Similarly, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Shanduka Investments owns significant shares in Coca-Cola and introduced McDonalds to South Africa.

In the face of the Mexican government’s inaction against the companies selling the products fuelling obesity, a progressive organisation dedicated to protecting citizens in Mexico, El Poder del Consumidor (“Consumer Power”), took on Big Food – and won significant victories.

After a harrowing two-year campaign, Mexico introduced a 10% tax on sugary drinks and a tax on junk food in 2014.

El Poder’s director, Alejandro Calvillo, said it was “imperative to speak out, to expose, to shed light, to point the finger” against the increasing consumption of over-processed foods, particularly sugary beverages.

Calvillo, the former leader of Greenpeace Mexico, believes that “western” food and drink has been marketed to poor communities as offering access to a better life.

“In regions where poverty prevails and most people do not participate in the world of hyper-consumption, drinking a Coke or other extremely sugary and intensely marketed drink is an aspirational act, the desire to belong to a world from which they are excluded,” said Calvillo. “Those instances of marketing ‘happiness’, of belonging to that advertised world, are accompanied by the activation of the pleasure centres in the brain by the high quantities of sugar.”

A year after the Mexican sugar tax, the purchase of sugary drinks had dropped by 10% in the most affected communities while the purchase of bottled water had increased by 13%.

As part of its campaign against junk food and drink, El Poder helped to form the Nutritional Health Alliance (NHA), a coalition of about 25 national organisations drawn from the health, children’s, small farmers and human rights sectors.

Five foods that (probably) won't kill you

Kale's leathery leaves may need some work, may not be delicious, but definitely won't be the death of you.

As every lifestyle-savvy media brand is aware, the easiest way to get eyeballs in these click-competitive times is to have endless stories on the topic 'How You're At Risk Right Now'. And the quickest and easiest way to do that is to write stories about how [insert literally any foodstuff here] has just been shown to be fatal.

Approximately 100 times out of 100 the actual study being cited in the article will have merely suggested there may be a correlation at work – that people who eat a lot of whatever it is suffer higher rates of cancer/heart disease/diabetes/vampirism/whatever – and added that the actual increase is well within the rate of statistical error for the size of the study. This is for several reasons, but mostly because science is complicated.

And it's true that everything can hurt you if there's enough of it. Too much of any substance is harmful, because that's what "too much" means.

And sure, people at website with "wellness" in the URL will tell you to eat whatever superfood – or, to use the scientifically accurate term, "food" – is in vogue, but the advice of such people should be taken with many, many grains of salt. Which, to be fair, you should probably try to cut down on since salt increases the amount of sodium in your bloodstream, making it harder for your kidneys to remove excess water in your body and thereby raising your blood pressure.

On a related note, there are three circumstances in which someone can legitimately refer to toxins in food and not be peddling garbage:

1. If they're talking about chemistry (that bitter almonds contain hydrogen cyanide, for example).
2. If they're talking about environmental pollution (such as lead getting into drinking water).
3. If they're the scheming Grand Vizier revealing their sinister plan to secretly murder the Sultan.

So, with all that being said, what are the foods that aren't going to kill you, probably?

LEMONS

When was the last time you felt ill after chowing down on some lemons? Photo: 123RF

They're incredibly rich in vitamin C which is hard to overdose on because it's metabolised in your body very quickly. All citrus contains vitamin C, but when we're talking about food that won't kill you, it's important to acknowledge that the beauty of getting your vitamin C in lemon form is that they're in the form of lemons, the least bingeable of the fruits. When was the last time you felt ill after munching down on a big ol' sack of lemons? Never, that's when.

KALE

It's high in fibre, it has zero fat, and you can't possibly eat a dangerous amount of it because it tastes like urine-dipped newspaper. It was turned into a hot food fad in 2015 because food writers thought it'd be hilarious, and they were right.

COFFEE

Not a good idea to be a slave to coffee. Photo: 123RF

The active chemical in coffee is caffeine, which is pretty damn difficult to overdose on since it leaves your body really quickly: depending on your age and weight, it's completely gone in between six and 12 hours. The only consistently negative health effect is that caffeine molecules bind to the same receptors in your brain as the adenosine molecules which tell you it's sleepy time. If you still have caffeine in your system when you want to hit the hay, it can mess up your sleep cycle, and that does have negative health effects. So, y'know, don't bring a thermos to bed.

BOOZE

Alright, fine. Alcohol really isn't good for your body. It's an addictive substance and the negative health effects are well known – everything from diminishing liver function through to septicaemia from improperly sterilised needles when getting your drunken facial tattoos.

How to make the perfect pastry

Samosas are traditionally made from a fairly sturdy pastry, presumably because, like the British pasty, this eminently portable snack was designed to travel well – they’re thought to have come to India from Central Asia in the saddlebags of Muslim merchants. Most people use plain flour, although Simon Daley, author of a book called Cooking with My Indian Mother-in-Law, makes his even more robust with strong white flour of the kind used for baking.

Madhur Jaffrey, Vivek Singh and Raghavan Iyer all work fat into the dough – the first two in the form of vegetable oil; the last, butter – while Daley relies on water alone to bring his pastry together, which makes his chewier than the others, though not unpleasantly so.

The butter version turns out more like a shortcrust than the crisp, flaky pastries produced by the oil, though this may also have something to do with the method: Iyer makes hers in the food processor, while Jaffrey and Singh gently rub the fat in by hand in the traditional way, which coats the proteins with fat while minimising gluten formation. It is then kneaded to partially develop the gluten, creating an elastic but still tender shell that is strong enough to withstand the pressures of stuffing and deep-frying, but soft enough to crumble obligingly in the mouth. With this end in mind, plain flour seems the better choice.

Despite Daley’s strict instructions to his readers to “Accept no substitutes!”, Meera Sodha’s book Made in India uses two layers of filo pastry, brushed with melted butter, for her “magic triangles”. This works surprisingly well, and is wonderfully quick though, as she observes, the results are lighter and crisper than the classic version.

Singh works nigella seeds into his pastry, which not only looks smart, but tastes delicious.

Sugared ligonberries Rårörda lingon (Sweden)

Lingonberries contain a lot of naturally occurring benzoic acid, something that industry adds to many preserves and jams to help them keep. The levels are so high that lingonberries just don’t go bad. Thanks to this, there is really no point in boiling them into jam and bottling them; you can just add some sugar for flavour and they will keep in a fairly clean jar at the back of your fridge for years. You can use fresh or frozen berries. It makes no difference to the end result.

Especially in northern Scandinavia and Finland, we eat sugared lingonberries on many things, sweet and savoury. They all seem to benefit from a good scoop of sweet and astringent ruby loveliness.

(makes 650–700g)
500g lingonberries
150–200g sugar

Place the lingonberries and sugar in a large bowl and mix with a spoon. Keep the bowl at room temperature and stir from time to time, until the sugar has dissolved. It should take a while for this to happen, at least overnight. Refrigerate when done.

Nigel Slater’s butternut squash with cappelletti and tomato recipe

The recipe

You will need 350g of butternut squash – that’s half a medium-sized squash. Scrape out the seeds and fibres from the middle and discard. Cut the flesh into long pieces, then into short, postage stamp-sized bits.

Warm 40g of butter and 4 tbsp of oil in a shallow pan then add the pieces of butternut, fry at a moderate heat for about 15 minutes or until they start to brown, basting them as they cook. Get a large, deep saucepan of water on to boil and salt it generously.

Roughly dice 200g of tomatoes then add them to the squash, with a couple of sage leaves, salt and pepper. Toast 1 tsp of cumin seeds in a dry frying pan for a couple of minutes then tip into the tomato and butternut together with a half tsp or less of dried chilli flakes and a half tsp of ground sweet paprika.

Add 125g of cappelletti to the boiling water, stirring as you do so, and cook for about 9 minutes until the pasta is al dente. Drain and toss with the butternut and tomato mixture. Serve with a good helping of grated parmesan. Serves 2.
The trick

It is often not necessary to peel butternut squash unless you intend to mash it. However, check the thickness of the peel first. If it is very shiny and thick, then best remove it with a potato peeler before you chop it into cubes and fry it.
The twist

Courgettes, marrows and white-fleshed summer squashes are good here, too, but will need a shorter cooking time than the butternut. Baste regularly with the butter and oil as they cook. Introduce herbs instead of the spices if you prefer. Tarragon and basil are wonderful with both the tomato and squash.