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posted by martyb on Thursday August 04 2016, @07:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-are-what-you-eat dept.

Latin America is leading worldwide opposition to food industry marketing, and The Nation has a story on how much is happening in Brazil.

[...] Over the last 30 years, big transnational food companies have aggressively expanded into Latin America. Taking advantage of economic reforms that opened markets, they've courted a consumer class that has grown in size due to generally increasing prosperity and to antipoverty efforts like minimum-wage increases and cash transfers for poor families. And as sales of highly processed foods and drinks have plateaued (and even fallen, in the case of soda) in the United States and other rich countries, Latin America has become a key market.

[...] In recent years, Brazil has inscribed the right to food in its Constitution and reformed its federal school-lunch program to broaden its reach while bolstering local farms.

And, in 2014, the Ministry of Health released new dietary guidelines that made healthy-food advocates across the world swoon. [...] The guidelines transcend a traditional nutrition-science framework to consider the social, cultural, and ecological dimensions of what people eat. They also focus on the pleasure that comes from cooking and sharing meals and frankly address the connections between what we eat and the environment.

This is precisely the kind of holistic, unambiguous advice that US food reformers hoped to see in our new dietary guidelines, which were released in January. But for the most part, the latest version—which influences billions of dollars in government spending, the $5 trillion food industry, and the diets of millions of Americans—remains vague and narrowly focused, ensuring that no corporate ox was gored.

There is an infographic which nicely summarizes the differences between Brazil's and the USA's food policies and dietary recommendations.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @12:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @12:42PM (#384034)

    NotSureIfTrollOrStupid.jpg

    For the most part, "foods that require preparation beyond heating" (yes, I'm talking about using a damn knife) are dramatically healthier. Essentially anything that requires soaking, slicing, or smashing is good for you independent of other factors.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 04 2016, @08:42PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 04 2016, @08:42PM (#384229) Journal

    For the most part, "foods that require preparation beyond heating" (yes, I'm talking about using a damn knife) are dramatically healthier. Essentially anything that requires soaking, slicing, or smashing is good for you independent of other factors.

    Then you should have evidence for that beyond the usual religious assertions. I'm aware that there are some awful processed foods out there. I'm also aware that you can construct a bad diet out of things that require human effort too. And once again, we ignore that requiring preparation uses up human time and effort, which is a thing of value in itself.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @09:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @09:18PM (#384246)

      Your juvenile "do all the research for me or its bullshit" gets tiring. You are the one who asserted that nutritionalism was the right way to go. You come back with proof that nutritionalism is superior to brazil's approach and then I'll back up everything on the other side. You made the unsupported claims first, don't be a hypocrite.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 04 2016, @11:19PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 04 2016, @11:19PM (#384301) Journal

        Your juvenile "do all the research for me or its bullshit" gets tiring.

        No, your juvenile assert shit without evidence bullshit gets tiring. Nutritional science is a notorious wasteland. Cult-like assertions and manipulations of public health such as were made or described earlier in this thread are only aspects of it.