Food production and the food industry in Brazil: Their impact on nutritional status

Abstract

The poor nutritional status of Brazilians is primarily related to demographic factors, inequalities in wealth distribution, government policies, uncontrolled urban growth, and a poor performance in producing crops for domestic consumption. Other contributing factors include family size, sanitation, education, urban migration, and the interrelation between nutritional status and health. Over the past several decades, Brazil has encountered two new problems that impact on food availability: production for export in order to minimize the consequences of its huge foreign debt and growing crops to produce fuel instead of food staples. These activities help perpetuate malnutrition by decreasing the hectar‐age available for the production of food crops for indigenous consumption. The food industry has not addressed this problem. Greater efforts could be made to increase the availability of processed foods at lower prices. However, considering the lack of incentive to address the malnutrition problem, a yearly inflation rate of over 300%, and a population of nearly 150,000,000, a reasonable solution to the malnutrition problem may be difficult to achieve in the near term.