Weekend read from the NYT:
How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food
"In places as distant as China, South Africa and Colombia, the rising clout of big food
companies also translates into political influence, stymieing public
health officials seeking soda taxes or legislation aimed at curbing the
health impacts of processed food.
[...]
Brazil also highlights the food industry’s political prowess. In 2010, a
coalition of Brazilian food and beverage companies torpedoed a raft of
measures that sought to limit junk food ads aimed at children. The
latest challenge has come from the country’s president, Michel Temer, a
business-friendly centrist whose conservative allies in Congress are now
seeking to chip away at the handful of regulations and laws intended to
encourage healthy eating.
“What we have is a war between two
food systems, a traditional diet of real food once produced by the
farmers around you and the producers of ultra-processed food designed to
be over-consumed and which in some cases are addictive,” said Carlos A.
Monteiro, a professor of nutrition and public health at the University
of São Paulo."
Mrs. da Silva and other vendors like her make regular deliveries for Nestlé to a quarter of a million households in Brazil.
