The measure, included in the Cardiovascular Health Strategy, provokes massive rejection and the Community warns that it will not accept prohibitions
The plan of the Ministry of Health on cardiovascular health yesterday unleashed a new controversy. To combat these diseases, the leading cause of death in Spain and in all Western countries, Carolina Darias’ department approved a strategy that provides, among other measures, for recommending restaurants to promote healthy eating through their menus and that they remove alcoholic beverages from them, including wine and beer, the most popular.
The measure generates rejection in the Region of Murcia. The Ministry of Health, for its part, warned that if the document contemplates prohibitions, it will have its opposition. He also asks Darias to change the wording of some points in the document, reproaching him for not going through the Public Health Commission before.
Specifically, the document discussed yesterday by the Interterritorial Health Council establishes the need to “collaborate with restaurant establishments to promote the Mediterranean diet as a model of heart-healthy eating, without including alcohol consumption.” At the same time, Health proposes to regulate the obligation of restaurants to offer free tap water (a measure already included in the recently approved Law on Waste and Contaminated Soil for a Circular Economy).
“We must focus on tobacco and pollution”
The head of the Cardiology service at La Arrixaca de Murcia, Domingo Pascual, believes that the Ministry of Health opens “a sterile and unnecessary debate” by advising that the menus do not include wine or beer. “There are more serious problems for cardiovascular health that we would have to deal with, such as tobacco and pollution,” says Pascual, also a professor at the UMU Faculty of Medicine. “The moderate consumption of non-distilled alcoholic beverages such as wine and beer, in small quantities, does not pose any health problem and is part of the Mediterranean diet.”
The ministerial recommendation provoked criticism from the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who uploaded a photo of a glass of wine to her Twitter account and wrote: “A good wine like the one that the gentlemen of the Government want to prohibit us.” An hour later, in a note, the Ministry clarified that “the strategy establishes recommendations for healthy habits and does not contemplate prohibitions of any kind. Therefore, it is false that drinks such as wine or beer are going to be eliminated from the menus of the day. Health also recalled that the document “has been approved unanimously by the Institutional Committee made up of representatives of all the autonomous communities and autonomous cities, and also by the Scientific Committee, of which various scientific societies are part.”
The Cardiovascular Health Strategy of the National Health System (Escav) has set itself the goal of achieving a change in the cardiovascular health of the population and promoting the adoption of healthy lifestyle habits and, in addition, trying to reduce alcohol consumption , proposes the promotion of physical activity or the fight against junk food, regulating the advertising of food, unhealthy drinks and alcohol and reducing, through fiscal policies, the shopping basket of the products that make up the Mediterranean diet.
healthy options
The document also advocates “regulating the presence and content of food and beverages” in cafeterias and ‘vending’ machines in public institutions and “all educational centers, public or private”, so that “majority of vending machines offer products healthy and alcohol-free drinks.
Several scientific societies, and individual cardiologists, have participated in this strategy against cardiovascular diseases, which in 2019 were the leading cause of death in Spain, 27.9%.
Hoteliers and producers say it is “another stick in the wheel”
David Gomez
“This is coming to put the finishing touch to a sector that has been two very hard years,” summarizes José María Rubiales, president of the Association of Bars and Cafeterias of the Region, integrated into the HoyTú federation. Rubiales regrets “the lack of creativity” of those who have written the draft of the Cardiovascular Health Strategy, “in the sense that they consider cutting to the chase, that is, recommending that hoteliers not put wine and beer in the menu, instead of planning an education exercise to raise awareness of the harms of alcohol consumption’.
In this sense, the head of the association recalls that alcohol consumption has been in free fall for some time. “Even on the menus, more and more people are asking for non-alcoholic beer, whose consumption has skyrocketed, because they usually have to go back to work after eating,” says José María Rubiales.
For his part, the president of the Association of Wine Entrepreneurs of the Region of Murcia (Asevin), Lorenzo Abellán, admitted that the opening of this debate does not come as a surprise, since it has been raised for a long time within the European Union (EU). Abellán insists that there are numerous scientific studies that certify that the moderate consumption of wine is even beneficial for the circulatory system and I do not understand why there are people who are determined to put spokes in the wheel”, laments the president of Asevin, a supporter of ” let the customer consume freely. In addition, he remembers that practically all the bottles of wine carry the recommendation of moderate consumption on their label.
#Health #recommends #restaurants #limit #alcohol #menus