NYTimes Article: Obesity in Brazil

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RIO DE JANEIRO JOURNAL

Beaches for the Svelte, Where the Calories Are Showing

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: January 13, 2005

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 6 - Fat Brazilians? In a body-conscious society

whose gifts to global culture include the girl from Ipanema, the tanga

bikini and Gisele Bündchen and other supermodels, the idea seems

heretical. Yet a controversial government study released late last

month confirms it: Brazil is experiencing an epidemic of obesity.

According to the report, conducted by the Brazilian Institute of

Geography and Statistics and issued right as summer arrived and people

began flocking to the beaches in skimpy clothing, just over 40 percent

of Brazil's adult population is overweight. Overall, 1 adult in 10, or

more than 10 million people, are obese, by international standards,

compared with fewer than four million who were deemed to be

undernourished.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva immediately disputed the findings.

Since taking office two years ago this month, the left-leaning

Workers' Party government that he leads has always maintained that

hunger, not obesity, is Brazil's main social problem and, as a result,

has made a Zero Hunger program the centerpiece of its health and

public welfare agenda.

" Hunger isn't something to be measured by research, " Mr. da Silva

contended. " Not everyone wants to recognize that they are going

hungry. They are ashamed. "

But the statistics show what nutritionists and doctors regard as

undeniable proof of an alarming growth of obesity since the

mid-1970's, when the survey was first done in its current form. As

elsewhere around the world, the main culprits, they say, are an

unbalanced diet and a sedentary lifestyle, with some variants that are

particularly Brazilian.

Brazilians have, for example, a pronounced sweet tooth, perhaps

natural in a country that is the world's largest exporter of sugar.

People routinely sprinkle sugar on naturally sweet fruits like

pineapple or papaya, and it sometimes seems that half the mass of a

cafezinho, the espresso coffee consumed everywhere in the country, is

sugar, not liquid.

" Brazil and the United States are the countries that have the highest

levels of consumption of sugar in the world, accounting for about 19

percent of calories, " said Augusto Monteiro, a nutritionist at

the University of São o who was a consultant to the government

study. " Consumption of soft drinks, for example, has grown 400 percent

in the last 30 years, and we think that could play an important role

in Brazil's growing fatter. "

In addition to incorporating increasing amounts of fatty, processed

foods in recent years, the Brazilian diet is also unusually heavy in

starches and other carbohydrates. A typical luncheon plate, especially

in the countryside or in poor neighborhoods, will contain not only a

small piece of meat and beans for protein but also rice, potatoes,

pasta, bread and cassava too.

Like people in more economically developed countries, Brazilians also

lead a more sedentary life these days. Between 1940 and 2000, Brazil's

population, now 175 million, went from being 80 percent rural and 20

percent urban to 80 percent urban and 20 percent rural, which has

resulted in a marked decrease in physical activity.

Brazilian notions of what is considered beautiful or sexy may also be

a factor in encouraging plumpness. Traditionally, the idealized

feminine form here has been the " guitar-shaped body, " a woman with a

slender bust and waist and an ample rear end.

" American men may focus on breasts, but the Brazilian man has always

wanted something to grab on to, " said Constanza Pascolatto, one of the

country's leading commentators on issues of esthetics, fashion and

beauty. " Women were always being told, 'You have to eat or else you're

going to look like a stick,' and were encouraged to be fleshy. "

While that preference may still be strong, especially in rural areas

and among the poor, the urban middle and upper classes seem to have

succumbed to the global preference for slimness. Dr. Monteiro noted

that in São o there are now clinics to treat anorexia and bulimia,

problems that barely existed 30 years ago but are appearing now

because of the " mixed messages that are being sent " through the media

about desirable body types.

The poor, who the study found are the group most likely to be

overweight, receive the same messages but do not have the money to

explore other options. o Lucena, for example, is a street

vendor here who stands 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighs 231 pounds and

worries about his health but argues that he is doing the best he can

raising a family on wages of less than $200 a month.

" I certainly can't afford to go to a gym, and though I know that

vegetables are good for me, they are very expensive, " he complained.

" My 5-year-old daughter is overweight too, and even after the doctor

ordered her on a diet last month, it's been hard to get her to eat

things like salad. "

Some commentators here have suggested that Mr. da Silva's

unwillingness to accept the study may stem in part from his personal

history. As he never tires of reminding Brazilians and the foreign

leaders he meets, he experienced hunger himself as a poor peasant

child and can vividly recall the sensation of going to bed on an empty

stomach.

Today, though, Mr. da Silva is one of those Brazilians who struggles

to keep his weight under control. With a mixture of sympathy and

amusement, the national press has chronicled his efforts to limit his

consumption of barbecue, beer and buchada, a fatty tripe dish native

to his home region that is the bane of nutritionists.

" The truth is that Lula's hunger has not faded away, " the columnist

Arnaldo Bloch speculated recently in the Rio daily O Globo. " As much

as the president eats and drinks and eats and drinks, the hunger and

thirst remain. It is a hunger and thirst that is ancestral, that

returns to strike daily " and which he, like others who were once poor,

" has never overcome. "