Civil society organizations, health professionals and university students mobilized on Wednesday to protest the lack of enforcment of a law meant to protect consumers from junk food.
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The law was approved by Congress and signed by President Ollanta Humala three years ago but the regulations necessary to implement it have not been put into place. The stated purpose of the law is to provide information to consumers regarding the nutritional values of processed foods for children and teenagers.
Demonstrators began at the Ministry of Health and proceeded to the headquarters of local TV channels 4 and 5 to highlight the lack of media attention on the issue. They then returned to the Ministry of Health.
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Saby Mauricio, Dean of the Peruvian National School of Nutritionists, argued that implementing the food law would help fight childhood obesity, adding that this is especially important given that “20 percent of Peruvian children suffer from those ailments [and there is] a tendency [for these numbers] to increase.”
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If implemented, the law would force the food industry to clearly label whether their products are high in sodium, sugar or saturated fats. The standards used in the law are in accordance with the recommendations of the World Health Organization. The law would also require that schools include healthy eating in their curriculum, promote physical activities and have their food providers offer healthy options. In addition, the law would regulate advertising directed at children and create an institute to monitor nutrition, overweightness and obesity.
According to Mauricio, “Many parents do not know what is in the food products that their children are consuming” and they thus “run the risk of exceeding the adequate consumption of such [foods] and increase the probabilities of being overweight or obese.” Other countries in the region, such as Ecuador and Bolivia, have similar laws and companies there have adapted their products to fit in with the norms.
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Enrique Jacoby, formerly with the Pan-American Health Organization, said Peru has had the highest growth in fast food consumption per capita in the region since 2000. Around one million children between the ages of 5 and 9 — and 12 million Peruvians over the age of 15 — are either overweight or obese, he noted, adding that “the law seeks to protect children from abusive publicity and the presence of junk food in schools. No doubt we are talking about overly processed products, hyper processed products, that are the engine of the modern epidemics of heart disease, obesity, and cancer…If the government does not intervene, what is coming is a health catastrophe with sickness, with kidney transplants, heart operations, diabetes treatment, (which are) largely complex and on top of that very costly.”
Jacoby agrees with the original promoter of the bill, Congressman Jaime Delgado, that the executive branch has not implemented the law due to pressure from large national and transnational food corporations. Delgado, for his part, echoed protesters, stating that “we demand President Ollanta leave office with dignity by implementing this healthy feeding law." If he does not, Delgado said, he "will be known as a person who shrank, became a coward, and gave into the pressures of companies.”
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