Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
Saturday, December 5, 2020
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
The stupid fucking asshole pope belongs in prison. "The pope was later made aware of the abuse at Provolo, but victims and lawyers for the children said he was slow to start an investigation. Argentine prosecutors said when the Vatican sent representatives to Lujan de Cuyo, they didn’t cooperate with the investigations."
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| The Rev. Nicola Corradi, in wheelchair, was taken from a courtroom in Mendoza, Argentina, on Monday after being found guilty of sexual abuse of deaf children at a Catholic-run school. |
LATIN AMERICA
Wall Street Journal - Argentine Court Convicts Two Catholic Priests of Sexually Abusing Deaf Students
Verdict in a case that horrified the country raised questions about how Pope Francis responded to the crimes.
By Ryan Dube
November 25, 2019
An Argentine court found two Catholic priests guilty of sexually abusing children at a school for the deaf, in a case that horrified the country and raised questions about how Pope Francis, an Argentine native, responded to the crimes.
The two clerics—the Rev. Nicola Corradi and the Rev. Horacio Corbacho —and a third man, a gardener, on Monday were found to have sexually abused 11 boys and girls as young as 5 years of age at the Provolo Institute in the town of Lujan de Cuyo from 2005 to 2016.
Father Corradi, an 83-year-old Italian citizen, was sentenced to 42 years in prison, while Father Corbacho, a 59-year-old from Buenos Aires province, received a 45-year-sentence for abusing and, in some cases, raping children. The court gave an 18-year sentence for sexual abuse to the gardener at the school in the western Mendoza province, Armando Gomez. Another man who worked at the now-closed Provolo Institute was convicted of sexual abuse and corruption of minors last year and given a 10-year sentence.
“This is a one-of-a-kind sentence, we’ve never received one so high,” said Sergio Salinas, a lawyer for the Argentine human-rights group Xumek, which represented Provolo victims. “This will be a reference for so many other cases.”
The Vatican’s role in dealing with the complaints of parents and victims has been questioned here and in Rome, where the first public denunciations were made in 2009 against a Provolo school in Verona, Italy. Father Corradi had been reassigned to Argentina in 1984 even though he had been accused of abusing children at the Verona school.
It is unclear when Francis—who has been dogged by charges of insufficient zeal in disciplining clerical abusers—learned of the abuse, though no public assertion has been made that he was aware while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, a post he held until becoming pope in 2013.
The pope was later made aware of the abuse at Provolo, but victims and lawyers for the children said he was slow to start an investigation. Argentine prosecutors said when the Vatican sent representatives to Lujan de Cuyo, they didn’t cooperate with the investigations.
In 2017, the Vatican sent investigators to Argentina who later recommended that the pope defrock Father Corradi and Father Corbacho. It is still unknown, however, if any action had been taken against the two men. The Vatican didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“We have to keep fighting because the church continues to not collaborate and provide information,” Mr. Salinas said. He said two nuns and several other school employees will go on trial in December for their role in the scandal, which involves at least 24 children.
The Argentine Catholic Bishops Conference directed questions to the Archbishop’s office in Mendoza, which didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. After Monday’s verdicts, Mendoza’s archbishop’s office said it expressed solidarity with the Provolo victims and would work on preventing similar crimes.
The Provolo Institute, on the outskirts of the picturesque city of Mendoza, was once seen a model school where poor, rural families sent their hearing-impaired children, hoping they would receive a good education.
Instead, children were subjected to horrific abuse that rights organizations said amounted to torture. They documented cases of students being locked up in an attic for days, where they were chained, beaten and deprived of food. The priests and school employees targeted the most vulnerable children, who were sexually abused in bathrooms, dorm rooms and in the school’s chapel. The children’s screams couldn’t be heard by the other boys and girls.
The details of the abuse shocked and angered Argentines, including a prosecutor on the case who said in 2018 that he began visiting a psychologist to cope with the impact the investigation was having on him.
Family members of victims and their lawyers said there were signs of abuse for years.
Cintia Martinez, whose son studied at the school, said she became alarmed in 2008 when she found a drawing in her son’s backpack of a man appearing to give another man oral sex. She said her then-12-year-old son, who previously enjoyed school, stopped wanting to go to the institute and had trouble sleeping in the dark. Ms. Martinez said she told school officials and authorities of her concerns, but nothing was done.
“No one ever helped me,” said Ms. Martinez, who attended Monday’s court session. “If they would have done their job, they could have avoided the damage to all of these children for so many years.”
Abuse victims at the school’s branch in Italy publicly denounced their abuse in 2009, leading the Vatican to discipline several of the priests involved.
In 2014, the year after Pope Francis’ election, the Italian victims wrote to the Vatican and the bishop of Verona about Father Corradi and other Provolo priests they said had abused them.
That was followed by the Vatican investigators’ 2017 recommendation that they be defrocked.
The apparent inaction by the pope has angered abuse victims and their advocates in Argentina. Something similar happened in Chile, when victims and rights advocates criticized the pope after he defended a bishop who was accused of covering up abuse by another priest. Last year, Pope Francis said the bishop, who denied wrongdoing, was the victim of “calumny” by abuse victims. That outraged the victims and many others in Chile. The pope later said he had made “grave errors” because he had been misinformed. He accepted the bishop’s resignation.
Last year, a former Vatican envoy to the U.S. accused Pope Francis of ignoring a history of sexual misconduct by then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and making him a powerful adviser. The pope declined to answer the accusations but, this year, a Vatican court found the former cardinal guilty of sexual abuse of minors and sexual misconduct with adults. Pope Francis dismissed him from the priesthood. Mr. McCarrick has denied wrongdoing.
—Francis X. Rocca contributed to this article.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Another post on this blog has more evidence for the idea that the pope belongs in prison:
Pope Francis is from Argentina where victims are accusing him of chilly indifference to clerical sex abuse.
Sunday, January 6, 2019
I googled "wikipedia Catholic Church sexual child abuse". I got an extremely long wikipedia article. Every country in the world that's infested with Catholic scum has an out of control child abuse problem.
Catholics who continue to feed the child abusers belong in prison for being part of the problem. Catholics are scum.
Here's part of it. I suggest click the link to see countless dozens of more pages about the abuse.
Wikipedia - Catholic Church sexual abuse cases
Cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders in the 20th and 21st centuries, increasing especially after the Second Vatican Council, have been widespread and have led to many allegations, investigations, trials and convictions, as well as revelations about decades of attempts by the Church to cover up reported incidents.[1] The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14.[2][3][4][5] Criminal cases do not for the most part cover sexual harassment in the workplace against persons who had renounced sexual activity and therefore pre-declined sexual advances. This category includes all priests and seminarians and all religious brothers and sisters. The accusations began to receive isolated, sporadic publicity from the late 1980s. Many of these involved cases in which a figure was accused of decades of abuse; such allegations were frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.[6][7]
By the 1990s, the cases began to receive significant media and public attention in some countries, especially in Canada, the United States, Australia and, through a series of television documentaries such as Suffer The Children (UTV, 1994), Ireland.[8] In 2002, a critical investigation by The Boston Globe led to widespread media coverage of the issue in the United States. Over the last decade, widespread abuse has been exposed in Europe,[9][10] Australia, Chile, and the United States.
From 2001 to 2010, the Holy See, the central governing body of the Catholic Church, considered sex abuse allegations involving about 3,000 priests dating back fifty years,[11] reflecting worldwide patterns of long-term abuse as well as the Church hierarchy's pattern of regularly covering up reports of abuse.[note 1]Diocesan officials and academics knowledgeable about the Roman Catholic Church say that sexual abuse by clergy is generally not discussed, and thus is difficult to measure.[12][13] Members of the Church's hierarchy have argued that media coverage was excessive and disproportionate, and that such abuse also takes place in other religions and institutions, a stance that dismayed critics who saw it as a device to avoid resolving the abuse problem within the Church.[14]
In a 2001 apology, John Paul II called sexual abuse within the Church "a profound contradiction of the teaching and witness of Jesus Christ".[15] Benedict XVI apologised, met with victims, and spoke of his "shame" at the evil of abuse, calling for perpetrators to be brought to justice, and denouncing mishandling by church authorities.[16][17] In 2018, Pope Francis began by accusing victims of fabricating allegations,[18] but by April was apologizing for his "tragic error"[19] and by August was expressing "shame and sorrow" for the tragic history,[20] without, however, introducing concrete measures either to prosecute abusers or to help victims.[21]
Here's part of it. I suggest click the link to see countless dozens of more pages about the abuse.
Wikipedia - Catholic Church sexual abuse cases
Cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders in the 20th and 21st centuries, increasing especially after the Second Vatican Council, have been widespread and have led to many allegations, investigations, trials and convictions, as well as revelations about decades of attempts by the Church to cover up reported incidents.[1] The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14.[2][3][4][5] Criminal cases do not for the most part cover sexual harassment in the workplace against persons who had renounced sexual activity and therefore pre-declined sexual advances. This category includes all priests and seminarians and all religious brothers and sisters. The accusations began to receive isolated, sporadic publicity from the late 1980s. Many of these involved cases in which a figure was accused of decades of abuse; such allegations were frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.[6][7]
By the 1990s, the cases began to receive significant media and public attention in some countries, especially in Canada, the United States, Australia and, through a series of television documentaries such as Suffer The Children (UTV, 1994), Ireland.[8] In 2002, a critical investigation by The Boston Globe led to widespread media coverage of the issue in the United States. Over the last decade, widespread abuse has been exposed in Europe,[9][10] Australia, Chile, and the United States.
From 2001 to 2010, the Holy See, the central governing body of the Catholic Church, considered sex abuse allegations involving about 3,000 priests dating back fifty years,[11] reflecting worldwide patterns of long-term abuse as well as the Church hierarchy's pattern of regularly covering up reports of abuse.[note 1]Diocesan officials and academics knowledgeable about the Roman Catholic Church say that sexual abuse by clergy is generally not discussed, and thus is difficult to measure.[12][13] Members of the Church's hierarchy have argued that media coverage was excessive and disproportionate, and that such abuse also takes place in other religions and institutions, a stance that dismayed critics who saw it as a device to avoid resolving the abuse problem within the Church.[14]
In a 2001 apology, John Paul II called sexual abuse within the Church "a profound contradiction of the teaching and witness of Jesus Christ".[15] Benedict XVI apologised, met with victims, and spoke of his "shame" at the evil of abuse, calling for perpetrators to be brought to justice, and denouncing mishandling by church authorities.[16][17] In 2018, Pope Francis began by accusing victims of fabricating allegations,[18] but by April was apologizing for his "tragic error"[19] and by August was expressing "shame and sorrow" for the tragic history,[20] without, however, introducing concrete measures either to prosecute abusers or to help victims.[21]
Thursday, February 8, 2018
The food industry is equal to the tobacco industry. Their business is genocide.
The food industry calls the rules in Chile government overreach. The food industry can go fuck itself.
Some people think it's OK to eat garbage once in a while. That's ridiculous. Garbage food belongs in a garbage can.
New York Times - In Sweeping War on Obesity, Chile Slays Tony the Tiger. New regulations, which corporate interests delayed for almost a decade, require explicit labeling and limit the marketing of sugary foods to children. By ANDREW JACOBS FEB. 7, 2018.
SANTIAGO, Chile — They killed Tony the Tiger. They did away with Cheetos’ Chester Cheetah. They banned Kinder Surprise, the chocolate eggs with a hidden toy.
The Chilean government, facing skyrocketing rates of obesity, is waging war on unhealthy foods with a phalanx of marketing restrictions, mandatory packaging redesigns and labeling rules aimed at transforming the eating habits of 18 million people.
Nutrition experts say the measures are the world’s most ambitious attempt to remake a country’s food culture, and could be a model for how to turn the tide on a global obesity epidemic that researchers say contributes to four million premature deaths a year.
“It’s hard to overstate how significant Chile’s actions are — or how hard it has been to get there in the face of the usual pressures,” said Stephen Simpson, director of the Charles Perkins Centre, an organization of scholars focused on nutrition and obesity science and policy. The multibillion dollar food and soda industries have exerted those pressures to successfully stave off regulation in many other countries.
Since the food law was enacted two years ago, it has forced multinational behemoths like Kellogg to remove iconic cartoon characters from sugary cereal boxes and banned the sale of candy like Kinder Surprise that use trinkets to lure young consumers. The law prohibits the sale of junk food like ice cream, chocolate and potato chips in Chilean schools and proscribes such products from being advertised during television programs or on websites aimed at young audiences.
Beginning next year, such ads will be scrubbed entirely from TV, radio and movie theaters between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. In an effort to encourage breast-feeding, a ban on marketing infant formula kicks in this spring.Continue reading the main story
Still craving Coca-Cola? In Chile, beverages high in sugar include an 18 percent tax, which is among the steepest soda taxes in the world.
The linchpin of the initiative is a new labeling system that requires packaged food companies to prominently display black warning logos in the shape of a stop sign on items high in sugar, salt, calories or saturated fat.
The food industry calls the rules government overreach. Felipe Lira, the director of Chilealimentos, an industry association, said the new nutrition labels were confusing and “invasive,” and that the marketing restrictions were based on a scientifically flawed correlation between the promotion of unhealthy foods and weight gain. “We believe that the best way to approach the problem of obesity is through consumer education that changes people’s habits,” he said in an emailed statement.
PepsiCo, the maker of Cheetos, and Kellogg’s, producer of Frosted Flakes, have gone to court, arguing that the regulations infringe on their intellectual property. The case is pending.
María José Echeverria, a spokeswoman for PepsiCo, said the company was fully compliant with the law, and had no interest in overturning it, but was only trying to protect its ability to use a locally registered trademark.
Kellogg declined to comment.
Soaring obesity rates are forcing governments around the world to confront one of the more serious threats to public health in a generation.
Planet Fat
Articles in this series are exploring the causes and the consequences of rising obesity rates around the world.
NESTLÉ GOES DOOR-TO-DOOR
How Big Business Got Brazil’s Poor Hooked on Junk Food
RESHAPING AFRICAN PALATES
Obesity Was Rising as Ghana Embraced Fast Food. Then Came KFC.
THE SODA TAX SHOWDOWN
She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.
A U.S.-STYLE DIET
A Nasty, Nafta-Related Surprise: Mexico’s Soaring Obesity
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
In Asia’s Fattest Country, Nutritionists Take Money From Food Giants
A FATHER'S FIGHT
One Man’s Stand Against Junk Food as Diabetes Climbs Across India
TIMES DOCUMENTARIES
Do Australians Need a Sugar Intervention?
BANS AND BLACK WARNING LABELS
In Sweeping War on Obesity, Chile Slays Tony the Tiger
Until the late 1980s, malnutrition was widespread among poor Chileans, especially children. Today, three-quarters of adults are overweight or obese, according to the country’s health ministry. Officials have been particularly alarmed by childhood obesity rates that are among the world’s highest, with over half of 6-year-old children overweight or obese.
In 2016, the medical costs of obesity reached $800 million, or 2.4 percent of all health care spending, a figure that analysts say will reach nearly 4 percent in 2030.
Such sobering statistics helped rally a coalition of elected officials, scientists and public health advocates who overcame fierce opposition from food companies and their allies in government.
“It was a hard-fought guerrilla war,” said Senator Guido Girardi, vice president of the Chilean senate and a doctor who first proposed the regulations in 2007. “People have a right to know what these food companies are putting in this trash, and with this legislation, I think Chile has made a huge contribution to humanity.”
From India to Colombia to the United States, countries rich and poor have been struggling to combat rising obesity — and encountering ferocious resistance from food companies eager to protect their profits.
In Chile, corporate interests delayed passage of the law for almost a decade, and on two occasions there were so many lobbyists crowding Congressional hearings for the bill that the Senate president was forced to suspend the sessions and clear the room.
But the industry rarely faces opponents like Senator Girardi. A trained surgeon with a flair for the theatrical, he is a key figure in the governing coalition of President Michelle Bachelet. During the long fight over the food law, Senator Girardi, 56, publicly assailed big food companies as “21st century pedophiles” and before Ms. Bachelet took office, spent weeks protesting outside the presidential palace with placards that accused her predecessor, Sebastián Piñera, of destroying the nation’s health by vetoing an earlier version of the legislation.
“Sugar kills more people than terrorism and car accidents combined,” he said in an interview as he shook a box of Trix cereal for effect. “It’s the poison of our time.”
There were other factors that made the legislation possible, including a legislature determined to address the rising economic costs of obesity and support from Ms. Bachelet, a socialist who also happens to be trained as a pediatrician.
In the end, industry pressure succeeded in easing some measures in the original legislation, including loosening the advertising restrictions and quashing a proposed ban on junk food sales near schools.
Strolling through a Chilean supermarket can be visually jarring. Boxes of Nesquik chocolate powder no longer include Nestle’s hyperkinetic bunny. Gone, too, are the dancing candies that enliven packages of M&Ms the world over.
Then there are the warning signs that appear on the front of countless items.
Cereal bars, yogurts and juice boxes, products long advertised as “healthy,” “natural” or “fortified with vitamins and minerals,” now carry one or more of the black warning labels. A bottle of Great Value brand light ranch dressing displays all four warning logos — marking it as high in salt, sugar, calories and fat.
“I never really paid attention to labels,” Patricia Sánchez, 32, an accountant and mother of two, said as she filled her shopping cart at a Santiago supermarket, with occasional help from her 7-year-old daughter. “But now they kind of force you to pay attention. And if I don’t notice, my kids do.”
Obesity rates in Chile have yet to fall, and experts say it could take years to significantly modify the way people eat. But by focusing on the packaging and advertising of unhealthy foods that appeal to children, the Chilean government is hoping to reprogram the next generation of consumers.
“You have to change the entire food system and you can’t do that overnight,” said Dr. Cecilia Castillo Lancellotti, former head of nutrition at the country’s Health Ministry and an early proponent of the legislation.
The new regulations, however, have prompted an unexpected payoff already: Food companies have been voluntarily modifying their products to avoid the dreaded black logos.
According to AB Chile, a food industry association, more than 1,500 items, or 20 percent of all products sold in Chile, have been reformulated in response to the law. Nestlé reduced the sugar in its Milo chocolate powder drink, McDonald’s is offering fruit purée, yogurt and cherry tomatoes in its Happy Meals, and local companies have been introducing new products like nuts, rice cakes and dried fruit to sell in schools.
Last month, Coca-Cola began an advertising campaign for new versions of Sprite and Fanta that boasts the tagline “Free of Logos, Equally Rich” — a nod to the fact that they will no longer contain warning labels because the company replaced half the sugar with artificial sweetener.
Ben Sheidler, a spokesman for Coca-Cola, said the company had created 32 new beverages in the last 18 months, and that 65 percent of its drinks portfolio in Chile could now be described as having low or reduced sugar.
A spokesman for PepsiCo said two-thirds of its beverage brands in Chile also qualified as low or sugar-free and that more than 90 percent of its snack offerings were now low in both sodium and saturated fat.
Other companies have embraced the logo system as a way to tout healthy offerings. Soprole, a Chilean dairy company, produced a commercial that features child newscasters explaining the label systemin a way their peers can understand.
“Originally we didn’t believe the logos would make much of a difference but in focus groups, we’ve discovered that kids really do look at them,” said Dr. Camila Corvalan, of the University of Chile who has been assessing the impact of new label system. “They’ll say ‘Mom, this has so many logos. I can’t bring them to school. My teacher won’t allow it.”
Soon after the labels began appearing, AB Chile, the industry association, released an online ad using Chilean celebrities to attack the new regulations. In one scene, a well-known television presenter propped up in his putative sick bed considers a tray of soup, crackers and marmalade — items he said the new law has deemed unhealthy. “This is what my mom gave me all my life and I can no longer eat it?” he asks indignantly. In another, an actress pulls a mound of mints from her pocketbook. “It’s obvious that they are high in sugar,” she says. “But I only eat two or three.”
The ad prompted a fierce backlash online that went viral. In one counterattack, the Chilean actor Pablo Schwartz posted a video of himself pondering a mound of white powder. “Everyone says cocaine is bad, of course, but would you snort a quarter kilo at once?” he asks before inhaling a bump and then adding “It’s all about portion.”
The association killed their ad criticizing the new regulations.
The job of implementing the rules falls to a group of technical advisers who gather weekly at the Ministry of Health and provide guidance on whether a snack company should remove the dancing cat logo from cookie packages or whether an adult‘s voice should replace the small, childlike one hawking corn chips on a radio spot.
“Sometimes it’s easy, like if a dog is wearing glasses and talking like a person, but sometimes it’s not,” said Dr. Lorena Rodriguez, the ministry’s head of nutrition. “We fight and fight and fight until we have consensus.”
Dr. Jaime Burrows Oyarzún, the vice minister of public health, is confident the government will prevail in court. As chief arbiter of the new regulations, he often bears the brunt of industry ire. After the banning of Kinder Surprise, a company executive from Italy and the Italian ambassador to Chile accused him of waging “food terrorism” during a visit to his office, he recalled in an interview.
Mauro Russo, managing director at Ferrero, the maker of the Kinder Surprise, said the law had been erroneously applied to their product because the toy is an intrinsic part of the treat, not a “promotional gadget,” as described by the legislation, that seeks to stimulate sales. He also disputed the notion that the product is unhealthy, noting that each egg contains 110 calories and that few consumers purchase more than one or two a year. “Kinder Surprise’s impact on obesity is very marginal,” he said.
Some nutrition advocates wonder how long the law will survive in its current form. Mr. Piñera, the former president who was recently elected to the office again and will succeed Ms. Bachelet in March, is a conservative businessman who vetoed the food bill in 2011 during his first term in office. Instead, his administration backed a nutrition initiative, financed by multinational food companies, that emphasized healthy recipes, exercise and moderation when it comes to junk food. The campaign was the project of the first lady, Cecilia Morel Montes.
“We don’t need more taxes,” she said in an interview.
A spokesman for Mr. Piñera said he would likely take a second look at the law and explore ways “to improve it” after he takes office.
In the meantime, other countries in Latin America, among them Ecuador and Brazil, are seeking to borrow elements of Chile’s initiative. Dr. Carlos A. Monteiro, a professor of nutrition and public health at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, said leaders throughout the region could no longer ignore the rising medical costs of diet-related diseases like diabetes and hypertension.
“The epidemic of obesity is so clear and harmful to the whole population, including the political elite, and no country is succeeding to control it without regulation of the food environment,” he said. “Doing nothing is no longer an option.”
Some people think it's OK to eat garbage once in a while. That's ridiculous. Garbage food belongs in a garbage can.
New York Times - In Sweeping War on Obesity, Chile Slays Tony the Tiger. New regulations, which corporate interests delayed for almost a decade, require explicit labeling and limit the marketing of sugary foods to children. By ANDREW JACOBS FEB. 7, 2018.
SANTIAGO, Chile — They killed Tony the Tiger. They did away with Cheetos’ Chester Cheetah. They banned Kinder Surprise, the chocolate eggs with a hidden toy.
The Chilean government, facing skyrocketing rates of obesity, is waging war on unhealthy foods with a phalanx of marketing restrictions, mandatory packaging redesigns and labeling rules aimed at transforming the eating habits of 18 million people.
Nutrition experts say the measures are the world’s most ambitious attempt to remake a country’s food culture, and could be a model for how to turn the tide on a global obesity epidemic that researchers say contributes to four million premature deaths a year.
“It’s hard to overstate how significant Chile’s actions are — or how hard it has been to get there in the face of the usual pressures,” said Stephen Simpson, director of the Charles Perkins Centre, an organization of scholars focused on nutrition and obesity science and policy. The multibillion dollar food and soda industries have exerted those pressures to successfully stave off regulation in many other countries.
Since the food law was enacted two years ago, it has forced multinational behemoths like Kellogg to remove iconic cartoon characters from sugary cereal boxes and banned the sale of candy like Kinder Surprise that use trinkets to lure young consumers. The law prohibits the sale of junk food like ice cream, chocolate and potato chips in Chilean schools and proscribes such products from being advertised during television programs or on websites aimed at young audiences.
Beginning next year, such ads will be scrubbed entirely from TV, radio and movie theaters between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. In an effort to encourage breast-feeding, a ban on marketing infant formula kicks in this spring.Continue reading the main story
Still craving Coca-Cola? In Chile, beverages high in sugar include an 18 percent tax, which is among the steepest soda taxes in the world.
The linchpin of the initiative is a new labeling system that requires packaged food companies to prominently display black warning logos in the shape of a stop sign on items high in sugar, salt, calories or saturated fat.
The food industry calls the rules government overreach. Felipe Lira, the director of Chilealimentos, an industry association, said the new nutrition labels were confusing and “invasive,” and that the marketing restrictions were based on a scientifically flawed correlation between the promotion of unhealthy foods and weight gain. “We believe that the best way to approach the problem of obesity is through consumer education that changes people’s habits,” he said in an emailed statement.
PepsiCo, the maker of Cheetos, and Kellogg’s, producer of Frosted Flakes, have gone to court, arguing that the regulations infringe on their intellectual property. The case is pending.
María José Echeverria, a spokeswoman for PepsiCo, said the company was fully compliant with the law, and had no interest in overturning it, but was only trying to protect its ability to use a locally registered trademark.
Kellogg declined to comment.
Soaring obesity rates are forcing governments around the world to confront one of the more serious threats to public health in a generation.
Planet Fat
Articles in this series are exploring the causes and the consequences of rising obesity rates around the world.
NESTLÉ GOES DOOR-TO-DOOR
How Big Business Got Brazil’s Poor Hooked on Junk Food
RESHAPING AFRICAN PALATES
Obesity Was Rising as Ghana Embraced Fast Food. Then Came KFC.
THE SODA TAX SHOWDOWN
She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.
A U.S.-STYLE DIET
A Nasty, Nafta-Related Surprise: Mexico’s Soaring Obesity
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
In Asia’s Fattest Country, Nutritionists Take Money From Food Giants
A FATHER'S FIGHT
One Man’s Stand Against Junk Food as Diabetes Climbs Across India
TIMES DOCUMENTARIES
Do Australians Need a Sugar Intervention?
BANS AND BLACK WARNING LABELS
In Sweeping War on Obesity, Chile Slays Tony the Tiger
Until the late 1980s, malnutrition was widespread among poor Chileans, especially children. Today, three-quarters of adults are overweight or obese, according to the country’s health ministry. Officials have been particularly alarmed by childhood obesity rates that are among the world’s highest, with over half of 6-year-old children overweight or obese.
In 2016, the medical costs of obesity reached $800 million, or 2.4 percent of all health care spending, a figure that analysts say will reach nearly 4 percent in 2030.
Such sobering statistics helped rally a coalition of elected officials, scientists and public health advocates who overcame fierce opposition from food companies and their allies in government.
“It was a hard-fought guerrilla war,” said Senator Guido Girardi, vice president of the Chilean senate and a doctor who first proposed the regulations in 2007. “People have a right to know what these food companies are putting in this trash, and with this legislation, I think Chile has made a huge contribution to humanity.”
From India to Colombia to the United States, countries rich and poor have been struggling to combat rising obesity — and encountering ferocious resistance from food companies eager to protect their profits.
In Chile, corporate interests delayed passage of the law for almost a decade, and on two occasions there were so many lobbyists crowding Congressional hearings for the bill that the Senate president was forced to suspend the sessions and clear the room.
But the industry rarely faces opponents like Senator Girardi. A trained surgeon with a flair for the theatrical, he is a key figure in the governing coalition of President Michelle Bachelet. During the long fight over the food law, Senator Girardi, 56, publicly assailed big food companies as “21st century pedophiles” and before Ms. Bachelet took office, spent weeks protesting outside the presidential palace with placards that accused her predecessor, Sebastián Piñera, of destroying the nation’s health by vetoing an earlier version of the legislation.
“Sugar kills more people than terrorism and car accidents combined,” he said in an interview as he shook a box of Trix cereal for effect. “It’s the poison of our time.”
There were other factors that made the legislation possible, including a legislature determined to address the rising economic costs of obesity and support from Ms. Bachelet, a socialist who also happens to be trained as a pediatrician.
In the end, industry pressure succeeded in easing some measures in the original legislation, including loosening the advertising restrictions and quashing a proposed ban on junk food sales near schools.
Strolling through a Chilean supermarket can be visually jarring. Boxes of Nesquik chocolate powder no longer include Nestle’s hyperkinetic bunny. Gone, too, are the dancing candies that enliven packages of M&Ms the world over.
Then there are the warning signs that appear on the front of countless items.
Cereal bars, yogurts and juice boxes, products long advertised as “healthy,” “natural” or “fortified with vitamins and minerals,” now carry one or more of the black warning labels. A bottle of Great Value brand light ranch dressing displays all four warning logos — marking it as high in salt, sugar, calories and fat.
“I never really paid attention to labels,” Patricia Sánchez, 32, an accountant and mother of two, said as she filled her shopping cart at a Santiago supermarket, with occasional help from her 7-year-old daughter. “But now they kind of force you to pay attention. And if I don’t notice, my kids do.”
Obesity rates in Chile have yet to fall, and experts say it could take years to significantly modify the way people eat. But by focusing on the packaging and advertising of unhealthy foods that appeal to children, the Chilean government is hoping to reprogram the next generation of consumers.
“You have to change the entire food system and you can’t do that overnight,” said Dr. Cecilia Castillo Lancellotti, former head of nutrition at the country’s Health Ministry and an early proponent of the legislation.
The new regulations, however, have prompted an unexpected payoff already: Food companies have been voluntarily modifying their products to avoid the dreaded black logos.
According to AB Chile, a food industry association, more than 1,500 items, or 20 percent of all products sold in Chile, have been reformulated in response to the law. Nestlé reduced the sugar in its Milo chocolate powder drink, McDonald’s is offering fruit purée, yogurt and cherry tomatoes in its Happy Meals, and local companies have been introducing new products like nuts, rice cakes and dried fruit to sell in schools.
Last month, Coca-Cola began an advertising campaign for new versions of Sprite and Fanta that boasts the tagline “Free of Logos, Equally Rich” — a nod to the fact that they will no longer contain warning labels because the company replaced half the sugar with artificial sweetener.
Ben Sheidler, a spokesman for Coca-Cola, said the company had created 32 new beverages in the last 18 months, and that 65 percent of its drinks portfolio in Chile could now be described as having low or reduced sugar.
A spokesman for PepsiCo said two-thirds of its beverage brands in Chile also qualified as low or sugar-free and that more than 90 percent of its snack offerings were now low in both sodium and saturated fat.
Other companies have embraced the logo system as a way to tout healthy offerings. Soprole, a Chilean dairy company, produced a commercial that features child newscasters explaining the label systemin a way their peers can understand.
“Originally we didn’t believe the logos would make much of a difference but in focus groups, we’ve discovered that kids really do look at them,” said Dr. Camila Corvalan, of the University of Chile who has been assessing the impact of new label system. “They’ll say ‘Mom, this has so many logos. I can’t bring them to school. My teacher won’t allow it.”
Soon after the labels began appearing, AB Chile, the industry association, released an online ad using Chilean celebrities to attack the new regulations. In one scene, a well-known television presenter propped up in his putative sick bed considers a tray of soup, crackers and marmalade — items he said the new law has deemed unhealthy. “This is what my mom gave me all my life and I can no longer eat it?” he asks indignantly. In another, an actress pulls a mound of mints from her pocketbook. “It’s obvious that they are high in sugar,” she says. “But I only eat two or three.”
The ad prompted a fierce backlash online that went viral. In one counterattack, the Chilean actor Pablo Schwartz posted a video of himself pondering a mound of white powder. “Everyone says cocaine is bad, of course, but would you snort a quarter kilo at once?” he asks before inhaling a bump and then adding “It’s all about portion.”
The association killed their ad criticizing the new regulations.
The job of implementing the rules falls to a group of technical advisers who gather weekly at the Ministry of Health and provide guidance on whether a snack company should remove the dancing cat logo from cookie packages or whether an adult‘s voice should replace the small, childlike one hawking corn chips on a radio spot.
“Sometimes it’s easy, like if a dog is wearing glasses and talking like a person, but sometimes it’s not,” said Dr. Lorena Rodriguez, the ministry’s head of nutrition. “We fight and fight and fight until we have consensus.”
Dr. Jaime Burrows Oyarzún, the vice minister of public health, is confident the government will prevail in court. As chief arbiter of the new regulations, he often bears the brunt of industry ire. After the banning of Kinder Surprise, a company executive from Italy and the Italian ambassador to Chile accused him of waging “food terrorism” during a visit to his office, he recalled in an interview.
Mauro Russo, managing director at Ferrero, the maker of the Kinder Surprise, said the law had been erroneously applied to their product because the toy is an intrinsic part of the treat, not a “promotional gadget,” as described by the legislation, that seeks to stimulate sales. He also disputed the notion that the product is unhealthy, noting that each egg contains 110 calories and that few consumers purchase more than one or two a year. “Kinder Surprise’s impact on obesity is very marginal,” he said.
Some nutrition advocates wonder how long the law will survive in its current form. Mr. Piñera, the former president who was recently elected to the office again and will succeed Ms. Bachelet in March, is a conservative businessman who vetoed the food bill in 2011 during his first term in office. Instead, his administration backed a nutrition initiative, financed by multinational food companies, that emphasized healthy recipes, exercise and moderation when it comes to junk food. The campaign was the project of the first lady, Cecilia Morel Montes.
“We don’t need more taxes,” she said in an interview.
A spokesman for Mr. Piñera said he would likely take a second look at the law and explore ways “to improve it” after he takes office.
In the meantime, other countries in Latin America, among them Ecuador and Brazil, are seeking to borrow elements of Chile’s initiative. Dr. Carlos A. Monteiro, a professor of nutrition and public health at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, said leaders throughout the region could no longer ignore the rising medical costs of diet-related diseases like diabetes and hypertension.
“The epidemic of obesity is so clear and harmful to the whole population, including the political elite, and no country is succeeding to control it without regulation of the food environment,” he said. “Doing nothing is no longer an option.”
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