Mass-market, mass-obesity & mass-murderers

New "obese chairs" on Brazil's subway

An article in FT Magazine discusses the shocking rise of obesity in Brazil. I noticed immediately upon arrival in Sao Paulo how out of shape most people were.

Pretty soon after, having experienced the horrors of shopping in local supermarkets (see blog posts passim), I realised that the poor consumer diet was largely to blame, notably an appalling excess of salt and sugar in almost all processed foods. I also saw the suspicious prominence of a certain company called  Nestlé among the few ubiquitous brand names that kept cropping up. The FT's article makes depressing reading (key extracts at the end of this post). I blame, first and foremost, the Brazilian Government (which perhaps means that really I blame the Brazilian people themselves since in the long run you get what you deserve) but, more specifically, I blame the terrible lack of education here.

Perhaps, though, I should pin the blame on modernity and the global rise of capitalism in a still profoundly unequal world. The strong will take advantage of the weak, in every aspect of their lives, and most especially when it comes to what they put in their mouths.

Obesity came to the UK back in the 1980s and 90s and initially many Brits blamed evil America. We were used to laughing and recoiling at the sight of over-fed Yanks, as we naively imagined such a thing could never happen in "sensible" Blighty. But happen it did and with a vengeance so that today being seriously overweight is one of the key health issues in the UK.

But the obesity trend has now become a worldwide phenomenon, as it follows hard on the heels of capitalism and globalisation. Nowhere is immune, not even places that were once considered safely beyond its reach, such as Japan, China and France. Being a consumer in the modern, multinational corporate landscape requires education so that you can know the "enemy": companies who wish to exploit you, rather than serve you or be your friend (and certainly not your parent, nanny or health adviser!).

Thus Brazil's obesity epidemic is just another sign of its increasing openness to global forces - good and bad.

The title of this post mentions mass-murderers. Perhaps you thought I was referring to the likes of Nestlé ? Deus me livre ! I was of course thinking of the hideous psycho killer who slaughtered a classroom of pupils (mainly girls) in a Rio school the other day. It was another first for Brazil. My Brazilian partner immediately started worrying and fretting about what had gone wrong with her country but I told her that, just like obesity, it sadly comes with the territory of increasing capitalism and, more importantly, individualism or, as a French writer might call it, atomisation.  

These horrors are, sadly, very old news in the US, but have also firmly established themselves in the UK, Japan, China, Russia and much of Europe (today's news had such a story from quiet Holland). Although I believe free and open markets and minimal interference from Government is the best way for most countries to progress, there is of course a downside that comes with greater personal freedom.

Being free is hard work, it requires constant vigilance, on a personal as way as societal level. Those who don't rise to the challenge and whom Lady Luck does not favour may come to regard themselves as "losers" rather than "winners" (both labels are equally odious), and if they are of an unstable disposition and have access to murderous weapons ... well we all know what can and does happen.

So although I am full of criticisms of Brazil, this latest headline-grabbing horror story, as sickening as it is, is not actually something for which I care to impeach the country.

On the other hand, the behaviour of food producers who potentially harm the bodies of 200 million Brazilians is perhaps a more serious and longterm concern.

Key quotes from the FT Magazine article on obesity:

The result has been an intensifying shift away from the older staple diet towards what Monteiro dubs “ultra-processed”, energy-dense food with high levels of salt, sugar and fat. He winces as he shows a picture of Lula in 2009 inaugurating a factory opened by Nestlé in the north-east of the country for Maggi instant noodles.

“They are nothing like noodles,” he says. “They look like pasta but [some varieties] contain a lot of fat and salt. It is very cheap packaged food, although you could make your own much healthier soup for a fraction of the price. Healthy things are being replaced by Nestlé. They are not replacing other unhealthy things with their products.”

“Paediatrics is heavily funded by the food industry,” he says. He cites numerous academic colleagues who have received research grants to publish articles on nutrition sympathetic to industry products ...