Mexico
Law · Administrative Acts

Amendments to the General Health Law – Overweight, Obesity, and Labeling of Prepackaged Foods and Beverages (2019)

Summary:

To add provisions on overweight, obesity, and labeling of prepackaged food and beverages to the General Health Law (1984)

Description:

This decree adds several relevant amendments to the General Health Law (1984) to extend its scope of application to nutrition and diet. The innovations include:

  • In the field of school hygiene, it falls to health authorities to adopt official Mexican standards to promote nutritious eating and physical activity (Art. 66);
  • The labeling of prepackaged food and non-alcoholic beverages shall include nutritional information that is easy to understand, truthful, direct, simple, and visible (Art. 212.2);
  • Front-of-package warning labels (in Spanish, “etiquetado frontal de advertencia”) must be separate and independent from the list of ingredients and nutritional information, to indicate products that exceed maximum limits of energy content, added sugars, saturated fats, sodium, and other critical nutrients and ingredients as established by relevant regulatory provisions (Art. 212.3).

For an overview of the General Health Law (1984), see the link provided in “Related documents”.