Final Project

MOOC

Ana Gabriela Garcia Esquivel A01139633

What are the arguments of the article in the Official diary (DOF)?

Arguments

A. The article establishes that excessive sugar consumption contributes to the weight
gain and obesity in Mexico, and something has to be done about it since this
causes severe complications.
B. The obese and overweight that is caused by excessive consumption of sugars also
leads to complications such as diabetes and chronic diseases and the secretary of
healt need to do something about it.
C. The secretary of health proposed a strategy to intervene in this situation and
diminish obesity and improve diabetes control, to provide a better quality of life
for citizens.
D. The congress of the union created an IEPS (Special Products and Services Tax) that
establishes a tax on sugary drinks and foods, to prevent this situation of metabolic
diseases continue to increase in the country.

What are the consistencies or inconsistencies that you found in the

document?

 Consistencies:
o The consistencies that I found in this article were that in fact the article
presented why it was important to intervene in this situation of increased
metabolic diseases due to excessive consumption of sugars.
o Examples of complications of having a high consumption of sugars were
presented, for us to understand the importance of the action.
o It was mentioned that an action plan was being taken where a tax could be
added to reduce the consumption of sugars in the general population and
thus improve the quality of citizens.

 Inconsistencies:
o It makes no sense that the article does not provide data as percentages of
obesity in Mexico. The article should provide more information about the
situation in Mexico, to give you a background on how the situation is in the
country.
o It is not very well explained how a tax can affect such a big problem,
besides that the secretary of health should be taking more action plans to
prevent these health problems.
o In general, statistics on obesity and weight levels in Mexico, diabetes
statistics and diseases related to excessive sugar consumption were lacking.
 In addition to missing statistics of the expected returns with the application
of the tax.
o Finally, I believe that I am missing a more extensive explanation of how the
tax increase worked, because I understood what it was, but I had to look in
other references about the tax to understand how it worked and the
impact on citizens.

What are the bias or errors that you found in the arguments (bad
arguments, fallacies, omissions, false inferences and deceptive statistics)?

A. The article establishes that excessive sugar consumption contributes to the weight
gain and obesity in Mexico, and something has to be done about it since this
causes severe complications.
a. In this argument, it is necessary a more extensive explanation about the
effects of sugar on people.
b. You need to have more statistics about the impact of these diseases in the
country in order to undersand the level of damage.
B. The obese and overweight that is caused by excessive consumption of sugars also
leads to complications such as diabetes and chronic diseases and the secretary of
healt need to do something about it.
a. Perhaps it is important to mention how sugar takes you from one disease
to another, how certain complications are related to excessive
consumption and how can we prevent it.
b. Give a background of diseases to understand why this measure should be
taken to apply a tax.
C. The secretary of health proposed a strategy to intervene in this situation and
diminish obesity and improve diabetes control, to provide a better quality of life
for citizens.
a. In this argument it is necessary to mention the impact that the application
of the tax will have on people, how the tax itself works because it is not
understood very well how this could modify the consumption of food.
D. The congress of the union created an IEPS (Special Products and Services Tax) that
establishes a tax on sugary drinks and foods, to prevent this situation of metabolic
diseases continue to increase in the country.
a. The operation of this tax was omitted.
b. The article is missing the expected change when applying this tax.
c. The article should mention how the tax works to better understand why it
was applied.

Can conclusions be derived from the arguments?

For the first arguments that talk about obesity and the situation in Mexico, it can be
concluded that it is very important to take an action plan to reduce problems in relation to
excessive sugar consumption (although there’s a lot of data missing). But for the
arguments related to the application of the tax law, a clear conclusion cannot be made,
because much data is needed, and information on how the tax would work. It is not
explained how it works and what is expected to happen when applied. There’s lack of
information and statistics to reach a good conclusion.

Does the point of view of the document is derived from research?

On the one hand, an investigation had to be carried out to write these article because in
fact the excessive consumption of sugars causes obesity, overweight, diabetes among
other diseases and it also mentions what the secretary of health is doing to improve the
situation. It also mentions the tax that will be applied and why it was applied, but the
person or persons who wrote the paper didn’t made an extensive investigation. The
investigation was made superficially, in fact it was not correct. Too much information is
missing, there are many doubts about the tax law after reading the article. An appropriate
conclusion cannot be reached because the research was inefficient. I needed to
investigate more about the data and how it affects the consumption of sugars in order to
understand the tax law.

In which way are you ordering your own arguments to avoid being
dispersed?

First I organize the information in al list by relevance, and then I investigate more to be
able to make my arguments more meaningful and more complete, and ensure that there
is no lack of information and consistency. Then reooganize my ideas by deleting the
incorrect ones. Finally I decide wich ones are the correct and finished ones.

Conclusion of the arguments and benefits of the new IEPS tax for the
beverages.

A. The article establishes that excessive sugar consumption contributes to the weight
gain and obesity in Mexico, and something has to be done about it since this
causes severe complications.
a. From this first argument I can conclude that, in effect, excessive
consumption of sugar leads to great complications, first you get to a state
of overweight and then obesity, which is not the last step, because you can
get to have other diseases that lead to more complications yet. I think it is
very important to take care of ourselves to treat these diseases on time and
to avoid complications since this can lead to death.
B. The obese and overweight that is caused by excessive consumption of sugars also
leads to complications such as diabetes and chronic diseases and the secretary of
healt need to do something about it.
 a. It can be concluded that it is necessary to begin to take preventive
measures, because complications are difficult to treat and often end in
suffering and death. These complications are very expensive, and to
improve the quality of life of the citizens of this country that is in the first
places of obesity in the world, the secretary of health is taking action plans.
C. The secretary of health proposed a strategy to intervene in this situation and
diminish obesity and improve diabetes control, to provide a better quality of life
for citizens.
D. The congress of the union created an IEPS (Special Products and Services Tax) that
establishes a tax on sugary drinks and foods, to prevent this situation of metabolic
diseases continue to increase in the country.
a. From these two arguments I can conclude that the secretary of health is
doing a good job by applying measures to prevent these complications and
to improve the quality of life of citizens. The new tax law will benefit people
since the tax on sugary products will cause people to reduce consumption,
since these goods will be more expensive people prefer to buy water and
healthier goods. This will also make people buy 1 or 2 sugary drinks or
snaks instead of buying 5 sugary. This will improve the quality of life of
people and could prevent these diseases, of course there are many things
to change to improve this situation, but this tax law is a good start.

References

Sugary beverage taxes to lower obesity . (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://anprac.org.mx/boletines/.