NAFTA

The fourth chapter, “NAFTA: Free Trade in the Body,” describes the magnitude and characteristics of Mexico’s so-called obesity and diabetes epidemic and the current hypotheses for the causes and treatment of obesity for individuals and at the population level. The chapter points out some of the lesser known hypotheses for the abrupt rise in obesity and diet-related chronic diseases in the last few decades. Far from linking the rise of obesity to increased appetites for snacks and sodas, some of these hypotheses focus on ways that the production and consumption of processed foods and beverages have increased people’s exposure to chemicals with metabolic and endocrinological properties that produce weight gain and alter organ function. The methodological and empirical challenges of understanding the effects of economic policy, like free trade agreements, on the body are explored.

People of the Corn

Chapter 2 explores Mexico’s ancestral cuisine and the ways that it has come to enjoy a moment of high prestige and appreciation in the global food marketplace in the last few years. The chapter discusses the question of ownership over the food traditions of Mexico and the ways that Mexican food has come to occupy a prominent place in elite, global food circles.

Deflecting the Blame

This chapter critiques some of the assumptions about the causes and solutions for obesity using anthropological and historical understandings of class and ethnic differences in Mexico. It unpacks Mexico’s policy response to obesity and diabetes, including its much lauded soda tax and poverty reduction policies, and demonstrates how a progressive and aggressive policy response has been stunted in ways that favor transnational food corporations, while deflecting the blame for diet-related illness onto individuals, especially women, and historically marginalized poor and indigenous populations. The chapter addresses the idea that better health and wellness can be achieved for the Mexican population through greater education and socialization into healthful ingredients and cooking styles, narrowly defined.

Laying the Groundwork for NAFTA

The third chapter, “Laying the Groundwork for NAFTA” explores the political and economic context preceding NAFTA, and the ways that Mexico’s elected officials and business interests paved the way for the agreement and have benefited from it. The chapter unpacks the concepts of food sovereignty and food security, and how a push toward food security has produced the possibility of a Mexico that no longer produces food.

Introduction

In this chapter, the main arguments of the book are outlined, including a rationale for a focus on diet-related illness and obesity as pernicious consequences of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a discussion of methods, and an outline of the text. The book is framed, as an analysis of the paradoxical rise in global popularity of Mexican food at the same time that ancestral milpa-based cuisine has fallen further from the reach of the average Mexican citizen. The rise in obesity and noncommunicable diseases as a consequence of Mexico’s reorientation of its economy away from small-scale agriculture and toward a food security model based on foreign direct investment is outlined.

Diabetes

The chapter “Diabetes: The Disease of the Migrant?” examines alternative etiologies for diabetes, including the syndemic connection drawn by some researchers between diabetes and emotional trauma. The chapter explores how this theory is supported by many of the vernacular etiologies of diabetes in Mexican communities. In this chapter, the possibility is raised that a “slow death” from diet-related illness has sinister ramifications in defusing and postponing calls for more just economic, trade, and migration policies.

Conclusion

In the conclusion, the author “connects the dots,” by linking changing food systems, policies and food ways, and diet-related illness to larger trends in Mexico and the United States: the militarization of security forces at the border and beyond, the drug war, and the widening gap between these two countries that share a long border. The chapter also looks for bright spots: food cultivators, producers and artisans who defy the trends toward industrialization and provide alternative and utopian visions of a different kind of world where health, joy, food and the interpersonal relationships that food preparation and enjoyment produce are not so heavily shaped by transnational food corporations, or even by immigration, health, social, and food policies. An argument is made that in addition to calls to “think globally, and act locally,” responsible citizenship also requires us to see the way that trade policies act globally in our name and raise our voices against policies that promote profits over health, even far from home.

Nostalgia, Prestige, and a Party Every Day

“Nostalgia, prestige and a party every day,” examines how food marketers and producers have manipulated cultural associations between food, status, identity and ideas about the past to boost market reach. Processed food alternately imitates and provides a counterpoint to ideas about “traditional” foods. At the same time, many people make efforts to retain habits and knowledge associated with milpa-based cuisine. The chapter acknowledges the inherent destructiveness of nostalgia in the variety that anthropologist Renato Rosaldo called “imperialist nostalgia,” mourning that which one has destroyed, in ways that further displace and destabilize historically dominant ways of preparing food.