Brazil’s poor have new problem: obesity
Historically underfed people discovered fast, processed foods as economy boomed
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil has been bogged down in a recession for more than two years but one business is still growing.
Fast food. And as it expands, so does the country’s obesity problem.
Brazil’s government won worldwide plaudits for bringing 36 million people out of poverty during 13 years of rule by the leftist Workers’ Party, which ended in August.
As the economy boomed and consumer spending followed, some people even joined a lower middle class which by 2014 had swelled to almost 60 percent of the population.
But the progress came at an unexpected cost: an explosion in the number of overweight people, who now account for 57 percent of Brazil’s population — with 1 in 5 obese. Not educated about obesity
Doctors, nutritionists and other specialists say the weight gain is particularly pronounced among Brazilians with low earnings — many of whom swapped precarious lives where food often was scarce for better incomes and cheap, abundant junk food and processed food.
“These are people who spend a lot of time at work or on transport. They do not have money or conditions to do physical activity,” said Joao Regis, an endocrinologist at Rio’s Clementino Fraga Filho hospital, part of its federal university. “They are not educated about obesity.”
The rise in weight problems creates a huge burden for Brazil’s stretched public health system, which is grappling with escalat- ing levels of diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
Rising obesity is a global phenomenon, but it is increasingly affecting developing countries in Latin America and Caribbean.
The percentage of overweight Brazilians already was rising when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — known as Lula — became president in 2003, ushering in an era of prosperity. Since then it has kept climbing for men and rocketed more than 40 percent for women. One in 3 children are overweight.
In 1975, Brazil had the world’s ninth largest population of underweight men.
By 2014, it was ranked third globally for obese men, after China and the United States, according to a study in the Lancet, a British medical journal. Nearly 1 in 4 women are obese.
Rio bar owner Veronica Cabral, 28, weighs 368 pounds, and her 8-year-old daughter, Debora, is classified as “seriously obese.” Cabral grew up in a “very poor” family in Recife in Brazil’s northeast. But, she said, “We lived by the beach, we fished, we had a garden and vegetables and fruit in the yard.”
When she was 13, her mother moved her and her four siblings to Rio. Two years later Lula came to power, and the lives of millions of Brazilians like Veronica began to improve.
Everybody in her family got jobs. For Brazilians like her who had grown up with little money, grabbing fast food and a soda at McDonald’s or a Brazilian burger chain like Bob’s was desirable and affordable.
Brazil’s fast-food market grew in value by 82 percent from 2008 through 2013. Even as the recession bit, the number of fast-food restaurants rose 11 percent in 2015. While Brazilians’ incomes might have been dropping, they clung to their habits.
Cabral weighed 483 pounds when she first sought help at Rio’s nonprofit Group for the Rescue of Self-Esteem and Citizenship of the Obese — GRACO, in its Portuguese acronym. Trend may be slowing
The group was founded in 2002 and offers free low-fat lunches, nutrition advice and physical education to about 200 people a month.
“Most of the time, these are people from low incomes,” said Rosimere da Silva, the founder.
Michele Lessa, general coordinator of nutrition at Brazil’s Ministry of Health, said the rise in obesity is due to growing consumption of junk food and processed food, an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, and the rising popularity of eating out rather than cooking at home.
The government has launched campaigns encouraging a healthier diet, financed exercise spaces in Brazilian towns, and encouraged more nutritious meals in school cafeterias.
Recent figures suggest the growth of obesity may have slowed, Lessa said.
Fabio Gomes, a regional nutrition adviser for the Pan American Health Organization, blamed rising obesity across Latin America on fast food giants that advertise aggressively to poorer, more susceptible people.
“They are less educated. They are vulnerable,” he said.
But activists are fighting back. Chile has implemented a law requiring health warnings on products high in sugar, sodium, calories or fats.
In March, a Brazilian high court fined a cookie company $88,000 over a promotion in which children collected packets to buy a cheap Shrek watch.
Government figures show obesity and excess weight are higher among citizens with less schooling. But Lessa, the health ministry official, noted that the epidemic affects Brazilians of all kinds.
“Obesity is democratic,” she said. “In recent years it is increasing more in poorer women, but it is a problem for all social classes in Brazil.”