Efforts To Combat The Problem
There have been efforts to combat obesity in the country, with the federal government investing about seven percent of its budget to various nutritional programs. Both public and private money has been spent on various campaigns aimed at modern eating habits. Mexico’s government has created nutrition programs, to deal with nutritional issues such as obesity; especially in vulnerable people and low-income sectors. These include food distribution among low-income communities, micronutrient supplementation, and fortification of food. All of this is made to fight the deficient of vitamins and minerals. Some programs, as the distribution ones, try to achieve the objective by dispensing food coupons on marginalized communities. One of these initiatives is implemented by the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS). This program is known as “Preven-IMSS” (Prevent-IMSS). It integrates nutritional and physical activities as components, to combat diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure. Another government initiative is with Mexico’s Health Ministry called “Oportunidades” (Opportunities) and “Liconsa”. Oportunidades has the aim to support low-income and extremely poor families with health services and food. This is reached by offering nutrition education with which families can develop their capacities to sustenance health and nutrition care.
In 2008, the Mexican Secretariat of Health and PepsiCo launched a health campaign for children. The program is aimed at elementary school-age children and encourages active participation in exercise activities and adopting a healthy lifestyle by using a computer game. In this game, the "nutrin," as the figure is called, needs help making decisions on what foods to eat, what sports to play, and when it should go to the doctor for a check-up.
Wrestling vs obesity was a campaign to promote to wrestling (lucha libre) fans to have an active way of life taking advantage of one of the most popular sports of Mexico. This campaign was from August 5 to November 19 of 2012 in Mexico City, State of Mexico, Hidalgo, Puebla, Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, Guanajuato and Morelos. "El Elegio" (A Mexican wrestler) was the official image for this campaign. He appeared in a pre-fight video talking about obesity and how to avoid it. During these events, both health/nutrition information was distributed along with application forms for government health care.
Voit, a sport brand, with the cooperation of the Mexican Football Federation and the health secretary of Mexico, released a new campaign with the name of "Measure yourself and activate". For this campaign Voit produced a special orange match ball with the name of "Xacte midete 2012" (Measure yourself exactly 2012) for professional football games in Mexico. This new ball is aimed at promoting the sport in children and reducing childhood obesity. Decio de Maria Serrano, the president of the Mexican soccer federation, said: "We are excited with this new campaign. All the people that are involved in this amazing sport have to contribute to combat childhood obesity it is a big responsibility because it is a big problem in this country. (Mexico) It is a task that deserves support"
Read more about this topic: Obesity In Mexico
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