Food and Nutrition Policies in Mexico: A Historical Overview

Posted on Sep 5, 2024 in Economy

Food and Nutrition Policy

Nutrition Policy: Establishes strategies to identify nutritional problems in the population, determine groups with deficiency problems, and outlines dietary interventions to improve the population’s nutritional status and quality of life.

Food and Nutrition Policy: “Policies aimed at ensuring people can access food to satisfy their needs and meet nutritional requirements for healthy living” (INSP, 2007:91). They encompass strategies for preventing hunger and malnutrition, as well as interventions promoting better health and quality of life through food.

Elements of Nutrition Policy

These include measures such as hygiene and food safety, nutrition education strategies, nutritional labeling, food fortification, and research in nutrition.

Components of Food and Nutrition Policy

Food Availability: Existence of sufficient quantities of food of appropriate quality, supplied through domestic production or imports.

Access to Food: Individuals’ ability to acquire appropriate foods for a nutritious diet.

Utilization: Utilization of food through adequate food, clean water, sanitation, and medical care to achieve nutritional well-being and meet all physiological needs.

Stability: A population, household, or individual must have access to adequate food at all times and should not risk losing access due to sudden crises.

Organizational Structure of Ideal Food Policies

Ideally, a country’s food policies should be organized in a single document, with a department responsible for coordinating and implementing the measures taken. In most countries, policies are fragmented and face competition from other departments: agriculture, health, education, research, etc.

Surveillance System and Nutrition Information

This system provides information on nutritional status from a broad perspective to inform decisions aimed at improving population nutrition.

Uses of Information:

  • National planning
  • Analyzing the effects of intervention programs
  • Predicting future trends

Aims:

  • Encourage and report on nutritional issues
  • Identify problems and define objectives
  • Incentivize nutrition policy development

Health Information

Observes changes over time and develops hypotheses about the possible influence of food habits and nutritional status on population health. Sources include morbidity and mortality statistics, anthropometric data, birth weight, and breastfeeding type.

Information on Food Consumption and Nutritional Status

Data on food consumption can be obtained at different levels:

National: Provides information on the amount of food available for consumption by a country’s population over a period. This data offers global information on food groups and allows for estimating energy and nutrient availability using food composition tables.

Family: Reveals the amount of food available for consumption at home by the family unit. It also enables energy and nutrient estimations using food composition tables and helps assess consumer trends.

Individual: Information on food consumption and nutritional status is collected in cross-sectional epidemiological studies. These studies assess the usual consumption of individual food intakes, considering consumption inside and outside the home. They often include anthropometric (weight, height, BMI, etc.), hematological, and biochemical indicators.

Strategies of Intervention

Nutrition policies encompass various complementary intervention strategies:

  • Improve the quality and quantity of available food
  • Catering
  • Accessibility – food distribution
  • Food quality control
  • Consumer information

Improving the Quantity and Quality of Available Food

Includes:

  • Agricultural policy (optimizing crops)
  • Food industry (encouraging new technologies)
  • Market policies (promoting food distribution)
  • Research (new food technologies, new products, etc.)

Collective Restoration

Includes institutional canteens.

Accessibility – Food Distribution

Strategies for promoting equitable and affordable food include:

  • Price policy
  • Marketing, transportation
  • Social programs

Food Quality Control

Strategies to ensure quality food availability include:

  • Regulation of quality standards
  • Hygiene and food safety
  • Biotechnology
  • Enrichment/food supplements
  • Research

Consumer Information

Aims to empower consumers to make healthier dietary choices through:

  • Adequate training of health professionals in nutrition
  • Nutrition education
  • Nutrition labeling
  • Food advertising

Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation

Nutrition policies should be planned by a multidisciplinary group of experts, considering information on food consumption, population nutritional status, and health statistics. They must also account for people’s knowledge, attitudes, and preferences regarding food and nutrition, and analyze existing resources. Indicators and techniques should be used to evaluate the effectiveness of each strategy and the overall nutrition policy.

Food Programs

Food Program: Any planned and executed action aimed at improving the population’s purchasing power and food intake, and consequently, their nutritional status.

Programs in Mexico

Mexico has implemented nutrition-related policies and programs since the early 20th century (after the Mexican Revolution). These have served various purposes over time, such as providing food to disadvantaged social groups or responding to economic crises impacting food security. To date, Mexico lacks a national food and nutrition policy that promotes the participation of different sectors of society in the actions it contemplates. The Constitution of the United Mexican States does not explicitly recognize the right to food. This right should be elevated to a constitutional level.

Types of Programs

  • Support for food production
  • Food fortification or enrichment
  • Food subsidies
  • Supplementary feeding (maternal-infant, school feeding for vulnerable groups or in emergencies, food for specific conditions, family support, support for food supply)

Historical Overview of Food Programs in Mexico

1922-1924: Several welfare programs were implemented.

  • Objective: Support consumers
  • Target Population: School-age children in urban areas
  • Strategy: Implementation of school breakfasts

1925: Grant to Production

  • Objective: Increase agricultural and livestock production
  • Target Population: Agricultural and livestock producers
  • Strategy: Grain storage for regulating market prices, market regulation of livelihood, economic adaptation to social needs, imports of maize and wheat

1936-1937: National Storage Tank, Wheat Market Regulatory Committee, Popular Subsistence

  • Objective: Control grain prices in the market, improve access to basic necessities
  • Target Population: Low-income population
  • Strategy: Grain storage for regulating market prices, market regulation of livelihood, economic adaptation to social needs, imports of maize and wheat

1940: Mechanization of Agriculture, Food Technique

  • Objective: Improve production and nutritional status, educate the public
  • Target Population: Economically weak
  • Strategy: Purchase of agricultural machinery, production credit, creating kitchens, popular milk outlets (1st rehydrated milk), foundation of the National Institute of Nutrition

1942: First Salt Iodization Program

  • Objective: Reduce iodine deficiency diseases (endemic goiter)
  • Target Population: All population, especially communities with endemic goiter
  • Strategy: Iodination and distribution of salt

1946-1950: Popular Supply Grants to Food

  • Objective: Reduce food costs and improve production
  • Target Population: Low-income population
  • Strategy: Import of goods in short supply, price controls on staples, modernization of the countryside and farming, creating the National Commission for Milk, school breakfasts, Green Revolution (improved seeds)

1958: Supply and Popular Subsistence, Immediate Action Plan for Federal Defense Attorney Consumer

  • Objective: Regulate prices of basic commodities, support production, protect the popular economy
  • Target Population: Low-income population
  • Strategy: Control of prices of basic commodities, guarantee prices for production, improve storage and distribution of agricultural products, monitoring and management of the national economy

1961-1965: Subsidy on Consumption of Farm Products

  • Objective: Increase revenue with guaranteed prices for farm products
  • Target Population: Rural and poor
  • Strategy: Creating Conasupo (National Basic Company) and the Company, rehydrated milk, keeping reserves of essential goods, regular market prices

1972: Subsidizing Consumption

  • Objective: Protect the economy and improve purchasing power, regulate market prices
  • Target Population: Low-income population
  • Strategy: Regulatory purchases of corn and beans, transformation of processed milk Conasupo (Liconsa)

1975-1980: National Program Support for Trade Ejidal (PACE), Integral Family Development (DIF), Mexican Food System (SAM)

  • Objective: Educate the public on food habits and distribution of dietary supplements, expand sales network, subsidize production, and improve the population’s nutritional status
  • Target Population: Infants and pregnant women
  • Strategy: School breakfasts, milk production for infants and mothers, creating soup kitchens, distribution of seeds and vegetables, credit for seed production, production and marketing of fertilizers, production subsidies and food distribution, price regulation of consumer products

1982: National Power (PRONAL)

  • Objective: Support food production, distribution, and consumption, changing food and nutrition conditions
  • Target Population: Population with high levels of marginalization, under 5, pregnant women, and infants
  • Strategy: Minimum wage increases on basic food, promoting food production, monitoring programs of nutritional status, dietary guidance

December 1987: Devaluation, a general increase in food and other goods prices

The state calls for an “economic solidarity pact.” The “solidarity” begins, which includes several programs aimed at health, education, food distribution, and improvements in public services in communities.

Their goal was to improve the health of rural, urban, and indigenous populations with high levels of marginalization.

1990: Education, Health, and Nutrition (PROGRESA)

  • Objective: Improve health and nutrition standards
  • Target Population: Population with low incomes, children under five, and pregnant women
  • Strategy: Monitoring health and nutrition, food supplementation, health education, and nutrition

1994: Supplementation Programs with Megadoses of Vitamin A

  • Objective: Protect against vitamin A deficiency
  • Target Population: Children under 5 years
  • Strategy: Provide supplementation to children during vaccination campaigns

2000: Federal Program Opportunities for human development of the population in extreme poverty. To achieve this, it provides support in education, health, nutrition, and income. It is an interagency program involving the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Mexican Social Security Institute, the Ministry of Social Development, and state and municipal governments.