A large and growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that sugar drinks are harmful to health. Intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) is a risk factor for obesity and type 2 diabetes. Mexico has one of the largest per capita consumption of soft drinks worldwide and high rates of obesity and diabetes. Fiscal approaches such as taxation have been recommended as a public health policy to reduce SSB consumption. We estimated an almost ideal demand system with linear approximation for beverages and high-energy food by simultaneous equations and derived the own and cross price elasticities for soft drinks and for all SSB (soft drinks, fruit juices, fruit drinks, flavored water and energy drinks). Models were stratified by income quintile and marginality index at the municipality level. Price elasticity for soft drinks was -1.06 and -1.16 for SSB, i.e., a 10% price increase was associated with a decrease in quantity consumed of soft drinks by 10.6% and 11.6% for SSB. A price increase in soft drinks is associated with larger quantity consumed of water, milk, snacks and sugar and a decrease in the consumption of other SSB, candies and traditional snacks. The same was found for SSB except that an increase in price of SSB was associated with a decrease in snacks. Higher elasticities were found among households living in rural areas (for soft drinks), in more marginalized areas and with lower income. Implementation of a tax to soft drinks or to SSB could decrease consumption particularly among the poor. Substitutions and complementarities with other food and beverages should be evaluated to assess the potential impact on total calories consumed.

In 2014 an excise tax to non-alcoholic sweetened beverages (SSB) was implemented in Mexico. The objective of this paper is to study whether and to what degree these taxes passed-through onto SSB prices in urban areas overall and by region, type of beverage and package size. Prices were obtained from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography from 2011 to 2014. We applied a pre-post quasi-experimental approach using fixed effects models. In sensitivity analysis we applied other model specifications to test the robustness of the findings and we also present weighted estimations based on household purchases. The dependent variables are real prices of a specific beverage category; the main independent variables are dummies for each month of 2014, and the models adjust for time trends and seasonality. Results suggest that the SSB tax passed along to consumers for all SSBs and we found overshifting for the carbonated SSBs. A greater effect is seen among the small package sizes, and we see heterogeneous effects by region. Estimating the effect of the tax on prices is important to understand the potential effect on consumption.

BackgroundChile is the second world’s largest per capita consumer of caloric beverages. Caloric beverages are associated with overweight, obesity and other chronic diseases. The objective of this study is to estimate the price elasticity of demand for soft drinks, other sugar-sweetened beverages and high-energy dense foods in urban areas in Chile in order to evaluate the potential response of households’ consumption to changes in prices.MethodsWe used microdata from the VII Family Budget Survey 2012–2013, which collects information on expenditures made by Chilean urban households on items such as beverages and foods. We estimated a Linear Approximation of an Almost Ideal Demand System Model to derive own and cross price elasticities of milk, coffee, tea and other infusions, plain water, soft drinks, other flavored beverages, sweet snacks, sugar and honey, and desserts. We considered the censored nature of the data and included the Inverse Mills Ratio in each equation of the demand system. We estimated a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System and a two-part model as sensitivity analysis.ResultsWe found an own price-elasticity of −1.37 for soft drinks. This implies that a price increase of 10% is associated with a reduction in consumption of 13.7%. We found that the rest of food and beverages included in the demand system behave as substitutes for soft drinks. For instance, plain water showed a cross-price elasticity of 0.63: a 10% increase in price of soft drinks could lead to an increase of 6.3% of plain water. Own and cross price elasticities were similar between models.ConclusionsThe demand of soft drinks is price sensitive among Chilean households. An incentive system such as subsidies to non-sweetened beverages and tax to soft drinks could lead to increases in the substitutions for other healthier beverages.

Exclusive breastfeeding among parous women reduces the risk of breast cancer compared with parous women who do not breastfeed exclusively.

Objetivo. Actualizar prevalencias de indicadores de prácticasde lactancia materna y alimentación complementaria(PLMAC) en menores de 24 meses en México. Materialy métodos. Análisis de la Encuesta Nacional de Salud yNutrición (Ensanut 2018-19) con diseño probabilístico. Población:Mujeres 12-59 años y sus hijos <24 meses. Cálculode indicadores propuestos por la Organización Mundial dela Salud (OMS) por variables sociodemográficas utilizandoel diseño muestral. Se usó la prueba de Wald para compararentre categorías. Resultados. El 28.3% de los niños <6meses recibió lactancia materna exclusiva (LME), 42.9% de losniños <12 meses consumió fórmula infantil y 29% continuólactando a los dos años. Sólo 49.4% de los niños de 6-11meses consumió alimentos ricos en hierro. Conclusiones.Existen mejoras en las prácticas de lactancia materna, aunquelas cifras siguen siendo bajas. Se requiere de la contribución detodos los sectores de la sociedad para mejorar las prácticasde alimentación infantil.