Of personal choice and level playing fields: why we need government policies on food content.

Some 30 years ago, I remember watching patients outside an urban clinic in Zimbabwe as they queued to be seen by the health worker. Often I’d see a mother offering a sip of soda to a toddler. The sweet beverage was accepted with delight. Sometimes, to my chagrin, soda was offered to an infant. Soda cost pennies then, making it a cheaper commodity than the bananas stacked in front of the vendors-and much cheaper than an apple that could be found only in a store. A choice that didn’t make nutritional sense actually made plenty of economic sense-at least from the mother’s perspective. And soda was a treat for a long wait without readily available drinking water. I tried to withhold my critical judgment of the sodas-and-buns breakfast. After all, at the time the main nutritional concern in developing countries was undernutrition, not overweight and obesity. Things have changed.