Amanda Ciafone: At this moment we may want to import something else from Mexico: leadership in public health.

At this moment we may want to import something else from Mexico: leadership in public health. There, health advocates and regulators have developed education campaigns and public policy about sugar-sweetened beverages, including those Mexican Cokes, the products of a business model exported from the US, and their links to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. They’ve implemented soda taxes, required clearer nutrition labeling, restricted marketing to children, and banned the sale of sugary drinks in schools. They’ve treated the issue not as a matter of personal taste but of public health.

As a historian, I won’t weigh in on whether cane sugar is healthier than corn syrup. That’s a question for nutritionists and scientists. But I do know this: a president’s personal preferences are no substitute for robust public institutions. You can’t regulate a food system by tweet. You can’t protect consumers with nostalgia. You can’t set policy by piecemeal targeting of products based on particularistic agendas and transactional politics. And you certainly can’t build a healthier nation by dismantling the very agencies tasked with safeguarding it.

If we’re serious about health, we might take a page from Mexico. Because in the end, it’s not about which Coke tastes better. It’s about which country is doing more to protect its people from the consequences of unchecked sweetness and power.

Amanda Ciafone is associate professor of media and cinema studies and history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of “Counter-Cola: A Multinational History of the Global Corporation.”  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/31/opinion/trump-mexican-coca-cola/