The bag of granola I sometimes buy first attempts to seduce me; Granola Integral!, Traditional! 10 vitamins and minerals and calcium! Rich in fiber and protein, No transfats, 13 ingredients! New packaging! Eat well, live well! but I know better. It's granola, not kale. On the list of the 13 ingredients among what you would expect like oats and coconut, I could find three of sugar's less famous evil cousins; third in line was melado de cana (cane syrup), fifth in line, brown sugar, and in 6th, extracto de malte (malt extract which is sugar taken from spouted barley).
It's almost impossible to find products without sugar here, even simple things like yogurt. Of the 200 different kinds of yogurt available at the market, one brand, one, maybe two, don't have added sugar. And don't get me started on bread! Not to mention the creepy "Lite" aisle at the supermarket with rows and rows of "healthy diet products" that boast "Sem acucar!" (without sugar), only to find on the label, all of sugar's evil cousins. Brazilian love these cousins just as much as good ol' sugga and you can find them at every table in any restaurant in packet or liquid form. In fact, unless requested, any juice you order will have a cousin added automatically.
Once I was having breakfast at a bed and breakfast with my mom. There was a little girl of about 5 years old sitting behind us with her parents. Her mom had just brought over a glass of orange juice from the breakfast buffet. The girl proceeded to grab packets of sugar from the table and adding it to her cup. Her mother didn't even blink. My mother on the other hand, almost fell out of her chair. This is not uncommon to see, and it's shows up in the statistics. Brazilians consume three times as much sugar as the world average, that's 150 grams of sugar per day, equal to 48 teaspoons! (Nutritionists don't all agree about what is the recommend amount of added sugar should be but most hover somewhere between 9 and 12 teaspoons a day!)
One afternoon, I came home to my frantic cleaning lady who wanted to have her afternoon coffee, but couldn't find any sugar. She was telling me that she had looked in all my cupboards and couldn't find any. She had made a list of stuff to buy at the supermarket and had added ACUCAR! in big letters. I reassured her and said, what are you talking about? There's a bag of brown sugar in the cupboard, and I pulled it out for her. Brown sugar? She asked confused. I didn't know sugar could be brown. I couldn't believe it. Is this a simple matter of people just not knowing? It's baffling. Even if you know a lot about sugar, what can you do without choices at the market, and no information on the labels?
There seems to be a shift, though toward better eating habits. There are two really great shows on tv that attempt at least to offer alternatives for a better health, "Alternativa Saude" (Alternative Health) and "Socorro! Meu filho come mal!".(Help! My kid eats badly.) The later one is hilarious, there's nothing like watching a reality t.v. show about a nutritionist who visits people's homes and tries to teach little kids who only eat frozen potato smiley faces and coca cola, to enjoy a plate of broccoli! I'm sure that there is a multitude of other educational programs out there that are attempting to make changes, but I think it will take a long time for Brazilians to give up cakes, condensed milk, coca-cola, chocolate milk, cookies and white buns for healthier alternatives.
I wonder what Brazil would be like today if they were the largest producer of lettuce......
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| A Cosan sugar mill, Brazil's largest sugar company. (Wikipedia) |
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