美国国家公共电台 NPR In Diabetes Fight, Lifestyle Changes Prove Hard To Come By In Mexico

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Here's a fact that tells you something about a country. It's the leading cause of death. The leading cause is different in different nations. In the United States, for example, it's long been heart disease. But as heart disease treatment improves, cancer is starting to take over. In Mexico, the leading cause of death is now diabetes¹. Researchers say up to half the country could suffer from diabetes if current trends continue. NPR's Jason Beaubien reports on what's going wrong.

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JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE²: Tona Barrientos is a doctor and an epidemiologist with Mexico's National Institute of Public Health in Mexico City. He's also a runner. Walking through the neighborhood in between his office and his home, Barrientos points out that Mexico City is an incredibly hard place to go out for a run.

TONA BARRIENTOS: I mean, the only place for you to really run is the sidewalk. You cannot run on the street because you'll probably get run over.

BEAUBIEN: But the sidewalk isn't the easiest place to jog, either. The surface is an uneven³ mix of broken cement slabs⁴ and cobblestones. Street vendors⁵ have set up little tables and carts to sell everything from electrical supplies to fried pork cracklings.

BARRIENTOS: There's a lot of obstacles (laughter), a lot of stuff and people. And there's these street carts and people selling stuff on the street. And you need to deal with that.

BEAUBIEN: Also the smog on some mornings is so thick it makes your lungs tingle⁶.

BEAUBIEN: You can smell it, right? The smell is - it's hard.

BEAUBIEN: To combat obesity⁷, Mexican health officials have been telling people to get out and exercise. But in Mexico City, that could be a hard sell. Type 2 diabetes is a so-called lifestyle disease. And it's mushroomed as Mexicans diets and work habits have changed dramatically over the last 40 years. Several generations ago, diabetes was almost unheard of in Mexico.

Now, it's the leading cause of death. Mexicans with indigenous⁸ ancestry⁹ also have a genetic¹⁰ predisposition for the condition that makes them more likely to develop the disease than Caucasians. But the main driver of diabetes in Mexico and globally is still what a person eats. Barrientos says that by 2030, 17 percent of all Mexican adults could have diabetes.

BARRIENTOS: And that, of course, opens a lot of questions in terms of sustainability, for instance. So can you really sustain a public health system with 17 percent of your population being diabetic, especially if you are not prepared to control the diabetes?

BEAUBIEN: If left uncontrolled, diabetes can have grave health consequences. It can lead to blindness, nerve damage, even kidney failure. Barrientos says Mexico's experience with anti-tobacco campaigns could hold lessons now for health officials trying to curb¹¹ diabetes.

BARRIENTOS: The only moment in which we started to see a real change is when we started to change the rules of the game. And we started by saying, well, we're going to increase the price of cigarettes because we know that the more expensive it is, the less you're going to be willing to spend your precious money on something that is not good for you.

BEAUBIEN: In an effort to cut soda¹² consumption, the government in 2014 imposed a one-peso-per-liter tax on sugar-sweetened beverages¹⁴. At the time, Mexico was the leading per capita consumer of soda in the world. In regulatory filings that year, Coca-Cola said the annual per capita consumption of its beverages in Mexico was more than 600 eight-ounce servings per year.

That means on average, every Mexican was having nearly two glasses of coke products every day. And that doesn't even count the amount of other sugary beverages they were drinking. Alejandro Calvillo, the head of a consumer group called El Poder del Consumidor, says soda is making Mexicans sick. And those cheap sugary drinks are available all over the country.

ALEJANDRO CALVILLO: And you can see the promotions¹⁵ - three liters of Coke, $1.10, something like that.

BEAUBIEN: Walking just outside his office in Mexico City, he points out that there are little shops selling soda and junk food on just about every block.

CALVILLO: Coke in Mexico have more than 1.5 million places that sell Coke. The presence of these products are everywhere.

BEAUBIEN: Calvillo was one of the advocates for the 2014 soda tax, although he would have liked the tax to have been even higher, saying it would have given the government more resources to combat diabetes.

CALVILLO: People no have information. You go to Chiapas in the indigenous community, you can see the kids with baby bottle drinking Coke, you know? And the government is not doing anything. It's crazy, you know?

BEAUBIEN: The head of the country's carbonated beverage¹³ trade association, Jorge Terrazas, says soda is being unfairly blamed for Mexico's high rates of obesity and diabetes.

JORGE TERRAZAS: There's not a conclusive¹⁶ scientific evidence demonstrating the relation between the intake¹⁷ of soft drinks with overweight.

BEAUBIEN: He points out that the average per capita intake of calories in Mexico far exceeds the World Health Organization's recommendation of 2,000 per day. And he adds that most of those calories are coming from things other than soda. But Calvillo and other anti-soda campaigners say sugar is a big part of the problem. And they say relying on individuals alone to change their lifestyles won't solve Mexico's diabetes crisis. Jason Beaubien, NPR News.

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1 diabetes   

n.糖尿病

参考例句：

• In case of diabetes, physicians advise against the use of sugar.对于糖尿病患者，医生告诫他们不要吃糖。
• Diabetes is caused by a fault in the insulin production of the body.糖尿病是由体內胰岛素分泌失调引起的。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 uneven   

adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的

参考例句：

• The sidewalk is very uneven—be careful where you walk.这人行道凹凸不平—走路时请小心。
• The country was noted for its uneven distribution of land resources.这个国家以土地资源分布不均匀出名。

4 slabs   

n.厚板，平板，厚片( slab的名词复数 )；厚胶片

参考例句：

• The patio was made of stone slabs. 这天井是用石板铺砌而成的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The slabs of standing stone point roughly toward the invisible notch. 这些矗立的石块，大致指向那个看不见的缺口。 来自辞典例句

5 vendors   

n.摊贩( vendor的名词复数 )；小贩；（房屋等的）卖主；卖方

参考例句：

• The vendors were gazundered at the last minute. 卖主在最后一刻被要求降低房价。
• At the same time, interface standards also benefIt'software vendors. 同时，界面标准也有利于软件开发商。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

6 tingle   

vi.感到刺痛，感到激动；n.刺痛，激动

参考例句：

• The music made my blood tingle.那音乐使我热血沸腾。
• The cold caused a tingle in my fingers.严寒使我的手指有刺痛感。

7 obesity   

n.肥胖，肥大

参考例句：

• One effect of overeating may be obesity.吃得过多能导致肥胖。
• Sugar and fat can more easily lead to obesity than some other foods.糖和脂肪比其他食物更容易导致肥胖。

8 indigenous   

adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的

参考例句：

• Each country has its own indigenous cultural tradition.每个国家都有自己本土的文化传统。
• Indians were the indigenous inhabitants of America.印第安人是美洲的土著居民。

9 ancestry   

n.祖先，家世

参考例句：

• Their ancestry settled the land in 1856.他们的祖辈1856年在这块土地上定居下来。
• He is an American of French ancestry.他是法国血统的美国人。

10 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

11 curb   

n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制

参考例句：

• I could not curb my anger.我按捺不住我的愤怒。
• You must curb your daughter when you are in church.你在教堂时必须管住你的女儿。

12 soda   

n.苏打水；汽水

参考例句：

• She doesn't enjoy drinking chocolate soda.她不喜欢喝巧克力汽水。
• I will freshen your drink with more soda and ice cubes.我给你的饮料重加一些苏打水和冰块。

13 beverage   

n.(水，酒等之外的)饮料

参考例句：

• The beverage is often colored with caramel.这种饮料常用焦糖染色。
• Beer is a beverage of the remotest time.啤酒是一种最古老的饮料。

14 beverages   

n.饮料( beverage的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• laws governing the sale of alcoholic beverages 控制酒类销售的法规
• regulations governing the sale of alcoholic beverages 含酒精饮料的销售管理条例

15 promotions   

促进( promotion的名词复数 )； 提升； 推广； 宣传

参考例句：

• All services or promotions must have an appeal and wide application. 所有服务或促销工作都必须具有吸引力和广泛的适用性。
• He promptly directed the highest promotions and decorations for General MacArthur. 他授予麦克阿瑟将军以最高的官阶和勋奖。

16 conclusive   

adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的

参考例句：

• They produced some fairly conclusive evidence.他们提供了一些相当确凿的证据。
• Franklin did not believe that the French tests were conclusive.富兰克林不相信这个法国人的实验是结论性的。

17 intake   

n.吸入，纳入；进气口，入口

参考例句：

• Reduce your salt intake.减少盐的摄入量。
• There was a horrified intake of breath from every child.所有的孩子都害怕地倒抽了一口凉气。