Kako korporativna Amerika izvozi bolest u ostatak svijeta

Hiperkonzumacija i njezina ideologija, nastale u SAD-u, proširile su se na ostatak svijeta zahvaljujući slobodnoj trgovini. Hipekonzumacija nezdrave hrane koju na račun zdravlja promoviraju multinacionalne korporacije već pogađa Kinu, Indiju, Južnu Afriku i Indoneziju, a nastavak tog trenda ubrzava globalan rast kroničnih bolesti. Kako bi se ponudila alternativa ovomu, treba razumjeti strategije koje multinacionalne kompanije koriste da bi distribuirale svoje nezdrave proizvode. Salon donosi primjer NAFTA-e i Meksika.
 
In the next decade or so, the people and governments of China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and other emerging nations will need to make a momentous decision: whether to follow the Western developed nations down the road of hyperconsumption that leads to premature deaths, preventable illnesses, and injuries, or to chart a different path of healthier, more sustainable consumption. Their choices will shape global health and the environment for the next century and beyond.
Since the first humans trekked north from sub-Saharan Africa more than 70,000 years ago, globalization has influenced public health. People, goods and services, money, and ideas traveled around the world, carrying prevalent diseases with them. What’s different today is the magnitude and speed of these global interchanges of health and illness. Money that once took months to move is now wired around the world in milliseconds. Diseases that once took weeks or years to cross national borders can now spread globally in hours or days. HIV became a global pandemic within a few years after spreading slowly for a few decades in Africa. Avian flu and H1N1 spread around the world within a few weeks.
What is also different is the growing power of multinational corporations to make the decisions that shape global trade. Companies that used to produce for local or national markets now send their products around the world, creating the potential for global outbreaks of acute illnesses or chronic diseases. Baby formula produced in China in 2008 was contaminated with melamine, a byproduct of plastic manufacturing illicitly added to formula to mimic high-protein additives. As a result, infants in dozens of nations suffered from kidney problems, and some died. Aggressive and sophisticated marketing of tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food, once confined to advanced industrial nations, has now spread around the world, contributing to premature deaths and preventable illnesses in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as well as in North America and Europe.
The corporate consumption complex and its ideology, born in the United States and Europe, has become a global force. If an alternative political or economic agenda is to lead to improvements in world health, it, too, must operate globally. The success of the tobacco control movement in curtailing tobacco use in advanced industrial nations but not in developing and emerging markets provides a grim reminder of the peril of ignoring the global dimensions of lethal but legal products and practices. As tobacco use grows in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, tobacco mortality is predicted to increase tenfold compared to the last century. Already, hyperconsumption has established a beachhead in the growing middle classes of emerging nations. Allowing these trends to continue will accelerate the global rise in chronic diseases and injuries and the growing health gap between the better-off and the poor.