Coca Cola: The consumption of soft drinks is alarming in this state of Mexico

Cola consumption in Mexico is high, but there is a region where it is excessive. Here the details:

At the Imperial restaurant, on 1st Central Avenue, in the San Pedro neighborhood of this town, the owner talks in Tzotzil with a sales agent from a Cola soft drink company, to ask that he bring her next delivery of energy drinks, flavored juices and half-liter boxes of soda, even though the three refrigerators, shelves and spaces of the establishment seem full, the owner knows that the diners They prefer a soft drink for breakfast or lunch.

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Minutes later, the owner serves four portions of beef broth to the Tzotziles from San Pedro Chenalhó, who have come to eat. There are two men and two women, but only three of them order a half-liter Cola soda. The third opts for a bottle of water.

Chiapas, high consumer of soft drinks

The daily consumption of bottled soft drinks in Chiapas is about 800 milliliters per day.

Gerardo Gonzáles Figueroa, researcher at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (Ecosur), assures that Even with the campaigns to raise awareness among indigenous people to stop consuming Cola, this does not stop. “Soda consumption is growing every day. It has not been possible to stop despite the campaigns. The sale of soda is indiscriminate,” states the researcher.

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Chiapas has no limits on its consumption of sugary drinks, which has generated malnutrition and destruction mainly in children..

The bill sent by the federal government on the Special Tax on Production and Service, to increase more than three pesos per liter, could cause a decrease in the consumption of sugary drinks in indigenous communitiesbut only some days, because then it would go back to normal.

“The problem is that consumption is going to increase. We have not created a soft drink country, but where we have no limits is in Chiapas”the researcher attacks.

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“We have gone from malnutrition to malnutrition. There are children who are obese at eight or ten years old and can cause diabetes, hypertension… delicate health problems,” he warns.

Cola soft drink consumption

At the end of the 70s of the last century, the communities of Los Altos de Chiapas incorporated Cola into their daily lives..

At that time, one of the chiefs of Tenejapa, a Tzeltal who lived in the El Cerrillo neighborhood of San Cristóbal de las Casas, began to bring the first refreshment bars to the communities of that municipality, remembers researcher Gonzáles Figueroa. The indigenous people immediately adopted the sweetening drink.

More than half a century after the arrival of sugary drinks to the indigenous communities of Chiapas, The results are problems of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and other diseases.

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“It has been a catastrophic cost. All these diseases that we call emerging have grown: diabetes, hypertension and others, associated with dietary issues,” he comments.

Originally, Mexicans used to accompany food with coffee or atole, but little by little they replaced it with sugary drinks.. “In San Cristóbal it was Nectarín (a regional soft drink that has now disappeared), Cola soft drinks became part of the culture,” explains the researcher.

The companies’ strategy was to sell the product at a lower price than what was purchased in the cities and this allowed families to buy industrial quantities of soft drink, as if they were going to market it.. “Actually it is because consumption is alarming,” he comments.

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Although the billboard ads encouraging indigenous people to consume sugary drinks in their native language are no longer there, as they were dismantled before the pandemic, The consumption of the drink “is high”, since an indigenous person consumes up to 300 liters of Cola or other sugary drinks per year, reveals the researcher..

In stores the prices of soft drinks are three liters, 50 pesos; the 1.35 liter one at 28 pesos; and energy drinks of 473 milliliters at 20 pesos. There is a 15-peso discount on the purchase of a three-, two-, and 2.5-liter Cola soft drink if you collect “three silver caps,” says an advertisement.

Outside a business run by two young Tzotzil men, two women are sitting on the sidewalk. “We no longer drink Cola, but in our community we drink a lot,” says one of them in Tzotzil.

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