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Post by fretslider on Apr 6, 2015 3:42:17 GMT -5
In times gone by, Navajo Indians ate whatever mother nature was generous enough to bestow, their existence intimately and spiritually bound up with the land on which they lived.
Their food would have been the envy of any modern dietitian as they foraged for pinyon nuts and wild potato, and nibbled on sumac berries, yucca fruit, prickly pears and beeweed greens.
Today, life is very different in the Navajo Nation, the largest American Indian reservation in America, which covers an area of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah that is the size of Scotland and has a tribal population of 300,000. The modern Navajo, who prefer to be called the Diné, are facing an intensifying health crisis fuelled by a complete transition to a diet based largely on fried potatoes, tortillas, cookies, crisps, sugary drinks and Spam.
According to the Navajo Area Indian Health Service, around 25,000 people on the reservation have type 2 diabetes and 75,000 are pre-diabetic. The obesity rate for some age groups is up to 60 per cent, and high blood pressure and heart disease are proliferating. Tribal politicians have been forced into action and this week the reservation became the first place in the United States to begin taxing junk food, despite opposition from some cash-strapped Navajo themselves.
The Healthy Diné Nation Act covers food and drink with “minimal-to-no nutritional value” and makes it subject to a two per cent tax. As well as predictable items like ice cream and sweets, it includes fruit juice, sugar-free Jell-O, diet sodas and energy drinks. The drinks industry, desperate to prevent a precedent that could be repeated elsewhere in America, sent lobbyists to the reservation but to no avail. A survey found up to 90 per cent of the food sold in Navajo grocery shops qualified for the tax. Meanwhile, an existing tax of five per cent on fruit and vegetables has been scrapped.
It will bring in an estimated $1 million (£670,000) a year which will pay for projects including farmers’ markets, community vegetable gardens, greenhouses, and exercise equipment.
The Navajo have had the right to make and enforce laws and to raise taxes since the 1830s, thanks to the US Supreme Court enshrining the right of tribes to self-government by defining them as semi-autonomous “domestic dependent nations” within the United States. The Navajo Nation has its own police department and courts and elects its own president and tribal council which sits in its capital of Window Rock, Arizona. Gloria Begay of the Diné Community Advocacy Alliance, which campaigned for the food tax, told The Telegraph: “Navajo used to farm the land in corn fields and look after cattle and sheep. A lot of lifestyle changes have happened and a lot of unhealthy food has come on to the reservation.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11517523/Biggest-American-Indian-tribe-in-US-introduces-countrys-first-junk-food-tax.html
Their food would have been the envy of any modern dietitian as they foraged for pinyon nuts and wild potato, and nibbled on sumac berries, yucca fruit, prickly pears and beeweed greens.
Today, life is very different in the Navajo Nation, the largest American Indian reservation in America, which covers an area of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah that is the size of Scotland and has a tribal population of 300,000. The modern Navajo, who prefer to be called the Diné, are facing an intensifying health crisis fuelled by a complete transition to a diet based largely on fried potatoes, tortillas, cookies, crisps, sugary drinks and Spam.
According to the Navajo Area Indian Health Service, around 25,000 people on the reservation have type 2 diabetes and 75,000 are pre-diabetic. The obesity rate for some age groups is up to 60 per cent, and high blood pressure and heart disease are proliferating. Tribal politicians have been forced into action and this week the reservation became the first place in the United States to begin taxing junk food, despite opposition from some cash-strapped Navajo themselves.
The Healthy Diné Nation Act covers food and drink with “minimal-to-no nutritional value” and makes it subject to a two per cent tax. As well as predictable items like ice cream and sweets, it includes fruit juice, sugar-free Jell-O, diet sodas and energy drinks. The drinks industry, desperate to prevent a precedent that could be repeated elsewhere in America, sent lobbyists to the reservation but to no avail. A survey found up to 90 per cent of the food sold in Navajo grocery shops qualified for the tax. Meanwhile, an existing tax of five per cent on fruit and vegetables has been scrapped.
It will bring in an estimated $1 million (£670,000) a year which will pay for projects including farmers’ markets, community vegetable gardens, greenhouses, and exercise equipment.
The Navajo have had the right to make and enforce laws and to raise taxes since the 1830s, thanks to the US Supreme Court enshrining the right of tribes to self-government by defining them as semi-autonomous “domestic dependent nations” within the United States. The Navajo Nation has its own police department and courts and elects its own president and tribal council which sits in its capital of Window Rock, Arizona. Gloria Begay of the Diné Community Advocacy Alliance, which campaigned for the food tax, told The Telegraph: “Navajo used to farm the land in corn fields and look after cattle and sheep. A lot of lifestyle changes have happened and a lot of unhealthy food has come on to the reservation.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11517523/Biggest-American-Indian-tribe-in-US-introduces-countrys-first-junk-food-tax.html
