Mexico City, (EFE) .- Organizations of Mexico and Colombia denounced on Tuesday that sugary beverage companies use high profile sporting events to promote the consumption of products that contribute to the pandemic of chronic noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases.
These events include, among others, the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, where companies reinforce their presence and reputation.
“This strategy is not accidental. It is a systematic effort to displace public health policies,” said Christian Torres, of the organization’s power organization, when presenting an analysis of the Coca-Cola interference history in health and environmental policies in Mexico and Latin America.
He also said that it is “to influence decision makers and consolidate the consumption of their products among younger populations.”
The organization, together with experts from the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico (INSP) and organizations of Colombia such as Red Papaz, carried out on Wednesday the virtual seminar ‘unmasking image washing through sport towards FIFA 2026’.
The event seeks to analyze this problem and propose actions to recover sport as a genuine space for health promotion and collective well -being.
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They recalled that sugary and soft drinks, also called sodas, are such harmful products that both international health organizations, as the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as financial instances, such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), have made calls to reduce their consumption.
This “due not only to the fact that it generates great damage in health, but also have a very serious impact on public finances,” they said.
Within the framework of the international campaign ‘Kick Big Soda Out of Sport’.
This, they explained, is a strategy through which large corporations use sport to wash their public image and hide the negative impacts of their products.
Gabriela Argumedo García, of the INSP, explained that the ‘Sportwashing’ goes beyond sponsorships: “individuals individuals or companies such as sugary drinks that damage the health of people or the planet, can be SportSwashers and use the support of the fans to erase their faults.”
The expert explained that the ‘Sportswashing’ uses “a valuable cultural heritage” for immoral purposes and, in doing so, “degrades” and can make sports participants as fans and athletes “become accomplices.”
He emphasized that Latin America is one of the regions most affected by this strategy, given the strong presence of the sweetened beverage industry and its influence in the sports field.
While organizations such as Red Papaz, a Colombian network of mothers, fathers and caregivers, represented by its director Carolina Piñeros, emphasized the negative impact that these strategies have on childhoods and young people, so they have promoted policies that denormalize the consumption of these products.
The international campaign ‘Kick Big Soda Out’, backed by organizations in more than 20 countries, requires international sports agencies to break links with the sugary drink industry.
In the case of FIFA, the sponsorship of Coca-Cola for more than four decades represents one of the most emblematic cases of ‘sportwashing’ globally.
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