Zumba and tax: Navajo looks to scrap bad diet
When Denisa Livingston and a group of Navajo women danced the Zumba in front of their council chamber, it raised a few eyebrows among the North American tribe.
The Latin dance-inspired aerobic workout was just one way of raising awareness about how exercise and healthy food can help an obesity and diabetes epidemic among Native Americans.
“We were the first group to do Zumba in front of the Navajo Council chamber to say ‘this is health,’” said Livingston, an organizer with the Dine Community Advocacy Alliance.
The Navajo Nation, the largest North American tribe with some 300,000 enrolled members, spans 71,000 square kilometers across parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Yet, there are less than a dozen grocery stores, said Livingston, making the area a “food desert” — a term the US Department of Agriculture uses to refer to a region where people cannot easily buy fresh, healthy and affordable food.
The health implications for the Navajo are dramatic. More than 80 percent of Native American and Alaska Native adults are overweight or obese, and one in two children are too fat for their age, says the government’s Indian Health Service.
In comparison, nearly 40 percent of American adults were obese as of 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Najavo broke new ground in 2014 when they introduced the first junk food tax in the United States.
The Healthy Dine Nation Act 2014 imposes a 2 percent tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and foods high in salt, fat and/ or sugar.
Meanwhile, a complementary law eliminated a 5 percent tax on fresh fruits and vegetables.
The tax has raised more than US$4 million for the Navajo Nation since coming into effect in 2015, boosting efforts to reverse a nutrition crisis where diabetes affects one in three people, said Livingston, whose organization spearheaded the law.
As mandated by the law, revenue has gone towards projects the Navajo define as health and wellness, such as vegetable gardens, craft classes, exercise equipment and walking trails.
However, only half of shops selling such foods comply with the law, said Livingston.
The law is changing people’s attitudes, and other indigenous groups suffering from a lack of healthy food could pass similar policies, she said.
Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said taxation was a small measure to help reverse weight gain.
Globally, 16 countries and a number of jurisdictions have imposed tax on sugary drinks, but very few tax food high in salt, fat and/or sugar, experts said.
Such foods tend to be very cheap and targeted towards poor communities.
Those include indigenous people that have “historically been denied their rights to land and rights to adequate food,” said Fabio da Silva Gomes of the Pan American Health Organization.
Many are produced using four plants — corn, wheat, sugarcane and soya — the nutrition adviser said.
This leads to “poor diets and poor and monotonous agriculture,” where swathes of land are used to produce vast amounts of a small number of crops, according to Gomes.
Across Navajo communities, these foods have caused mental, physical and spiritual damage, as traditional practices were lost for decades, Livingston said. She is hoping the Navajo Nation can leverage such ancestral knowledge, along with Zumba and other fitness classes, to build a healthier community.