Mexico announces food and agriculture plan that could take the country back to the 1980s

President Claudia Sheinbaum pledged Tuesday to revive those often shabby, limited government stores and continue efforts to achieve “food sovereignty.”

The policies appear to run counter to market trends and what Mexican food sales look like today, when consumption of most of the old basics has fallen.

However, the health benefits aren't clear: The most common bean recipe in Mexico — refried beans — often contains a considerable dose of lard.

Apart from the challenge of trying to change consumer habits, the policy also runs counter to market trends. While some countries are trying to encourage high-value varietal and specialized chocolate strains, Mexico is focusing on the cheapest products.

Sheinbaum's focus on self-sufficiency in oil, energy and foodstuffs is a holdover from her predecessor

López Obrador also appears to have passed on his nostalgia for a 1970s-style Mexico — including passenger rail service, state-owned industries, tight-knit families and small corner stores — to Sheinbaum.

But the government's track record in actually changing consumer behavior is poor, columnist Javier Tejado wrote Tuesday in the newspaper El Universal. He reminded readers that the government banned junk food advertisements aimed at children in 2014.

“The result after ten years of prohibitions?” Tejado wrote. “Things are worse than when they started in 2014; Mexicans have decided to keep consuming things they like.”

Stay absolutely classy, Asshole Propagandists.

Some good Yahoo News comments.

The top one:

"The most common bean recipe in Mexico — refried beans — often contains a considerable dose of lard."

First of all, no the most common bean recipe is simple boiled pot beans which have no oil--and they are healthy. Pot beans are the precursor to refried beans, refried beans are actually made with leftover pot beans from the previous day's meal. And refried beans are often also made with corn or canola oils. Beans with red rice, maybe salsa, and corn tortillas are a simple healthy vegetarian based meal that provides a complete vegetable based protein, fiber, niacin, calcium, lycopene, iron, and vitamin C. Mexicans lived on such a diet for hundreds of years (plus tamales, etc.), and tended to live long (90s and 100s), permitting wars were not playing out.

There's a reason obesity has increased in Mexico and that's because Mexicans have adopted the more industrialized U.S. food styles of eating since the 1980s.

Going back to that would not be a panacea, but would be healthier.

Was listening to a show a while back. They were discussing the agriculture of Mexico over the decades. How things have changed for the worse. So many of the small family farms have disappeared, like they have here in the U.S. So many of the farms have been taken over by large corporations, many U.S. owned. These corporations have changed the crops grown in Mexico, to fit the demands of the U.S. markets. That's why so much, U.S. produce, is grown in Mexico. They've done away with many of the native grown and consumed products, consumed in Mexico. Asparagus was another example. Normally found in the Northern U.S. at very high prices, was moved to the mountainous regions of Mexico. Now, it's available to the U.S. consumers at very low prices. In the old days, my mother-in-law used to show up at the house with her 5-gallon bucket of lard. Sure tasted good, but it was terrible on my arteries.

Perhaps she is trying to help the rural poor rather than the urban wealthy? That would be different, huh?

This is part of a much broader effort to curtail the United States' ongoing efforts to dump cheap and highly processed food on Mexico.

The US has tried to force GMO corn on that country for years (just as it's done everywhere else in the world) and Mexico has resisted.

I commend Mexico for standing their ground.

The United States has devastated other countries' agricultural systems in order to seize market control for Big Business. (Ex: Haiti use to be largely self-sufficient until the US put all their rice growers out of business and made that country dependent upon imports from the US.)

Mexico is being smart on this one.