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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: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 04 2016, @06:17PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday August 04 2016, @06:17PM (#384148)

    A few years ago, it was announced that the Mexicans and Egyptians had overtaken the US in obesity rates.
    Gladly, the US fought back to retake the first spot.

    I see a market for extra-sturdy 31-ft ladders, and thick ropes.

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