Do Mexico's New Food Labelling Rules Encourage Unhealthy Sugar Consumption? Mark Stevenson - The Associated Press
go to original April 25, 2014

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's new food labeling rules were supposed to help fight an obesity epidemic, but activists and experts said that they may actually encourage the public to consume high levels of sugar.

The debate over sugar has grown bitter, in a country with one of the highest obesity rates in the Western Hemisphere.

The new label rules unveiled last week list the amount of sugar and other contents as a per cent of recommended daily intakes. The new labels will no longer list the weights of the ingredients, instead simply listing them as calories and percentages of recommended daily intake.

But the labels assume that an average acceptable daily consumption of sugar is about 360 calories, equivalent to about 90 grams of sugar.

The World Health Organization has proposed a sugar intake of as little as 100 calories or about 25 grams per day.

Almost three dozen public health and nutrition experts published a full-page ad in Mexican newspapers this week saying the new rules "increase the risk of obesity and diabetes."

Read the rest at CTV News

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