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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

As an American who lived in Brazil for 8 years, honestly I'm not sure this is any worse than traditional food.

A typical Brazilian lunch is a piece of meat with beans, sides of rice, french fries, and fried flour (farofa) -- that's right, 3 carbs of empty calories (2 fried) and no real vegetables -- all washed down with mostly-added-sugar "fruit juice concentrate" (cashew apple is really common). Bar snacks are 100% deep-fried, or "pizza" with copious amounts of sugary ketchup (don't ask). Desserts are the sweetest things your tongue has ever touched -- brigadeiros, pudim, essentially all just super-sweet condensed milk.

It's not like the traditional Brazilian diet is full of fresh veggies or nutritional variety at all. I mean, I thought us Americans loved our french fries... but the Brazilians have got us beat!

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As a Brazilian-American who spent many years in both countries from the 1980s until today, you're misrepresenting things a bit.

First of all, the juice concentrates are a newish thing, 20 years ago it was still common to make fruit juice from scratch at home every day. Also, farofa is fried (more like sauteed, it doesn't need that much oil) yucca flour, which is a world away from refined white flour. Growing up, lunch was a large salad along with rice, beans, a cooked vegetable and some kind of meat or fish.

I fully admit that Brazil really took to fast food and it's just as terrible as it is anywhere, but your analysis of "traditional" Brazilian food is quite myopic and probably influenced by your own white-collar professional tendencies towards convenience foods.

What is in a typical Brazilian breakfast in you opinion?

Very light in my experience, usually just coffee and some bread and butter, maybe ham and cheese, and some fruit.

Exactly this. Brazilians do not care about breakfast. Only when in Hotels or something like that.

That is what I have here in the US. And most people I know do the same or some variation.

BTW, the main Brazilian meal is usually lunch.

Which is actually healthier than the American perspective of having dinner be the main/largest meal.

Fruit juice is pretty bad on the calories regardless of added sugar or not. I mean, the sugar doesn't help, and has other bad effects (teeth, most notably).

But the issue with fruit juice is just how much fruit you need to make it. One glass of apple juice is 3-4 apples. An apple is 60-80 calories. That makes that glass about 300 calories, which is ridiculous.

It's a bit less bad with orange juice, although like lemon juice it has other problems (they're very acidic, at least as bad as coke).

So one glass of juice should be somewhere between 20-25% of your total meal calorie intake. As in, if you drink (one glass) of juice, 2 loaves of bread is now your limit. With water, you can do 3.

But the sugar. Well, the sugar takes the 250-300 calorie glass to 300-350. Not good, but ... not going to make the difference. That's like taking a bit more jam on the sandwich.

Having a 300 calorie drink is of no issue if you have a long walk to school where you are physically active, to your manual job or your day spent looking after your family and manually cleaning and managing your home. 2000 calories is the recommended level for sedentary westerners.

Well, my issue with fruit juice is that one or even two aren't enough to not feel thirsty anymore. And any walk that takes 600-900 calories to get to my job is not one I'll actually take on a regular basis.

A good estimate is 30-50 calories per kilometer, so a single glass of juice requires, let's say, a 5 kilometer walk to compensate.

I'm a mostly sedentary westerner, but I don't think I've eaten 2000 calories in a single day for a year at least.

I've never heard of anyone drinking 900 calories of fruit juice! Is this an American thing?

Just so we're clear: that's 3 glasses, right. Have you really never drunk 3 glasses of fruit juice ?

According to Wikipedia [1], it's more like 8 glasses (2,5 dl/ 1 cup per glass) of orange juice. That's 2 liters. The apple/grape juice carton I have handy gives a very similiar number. What kind of juice (or portion size) are you thinking of?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_juice

3 massive glasses - no, I've never drank anything like 2 litres of fruit juice in one day, let along one sitting.

Where have you seen a glass of apple juice with 300 kcal? In my (European) experience it's barely a hundred or so. Is this some American version that consists of vaguely apple-flavored sugar or something? I'm actually slightly envious because I'm a tad underweight (and with a very low body fat percentage) and find gaining weight difficult.

Fresh squeezed orange juice is 110 calories per 8 oz serving. But most people in America would drink a glass more like twice that size.

I guess it's mostly just a difference in volume then. Google tells me 8 oz translates to about 230 ml, that's pretty much the average glass of juice around here.

People would complain if a resteraunt give them such a small glass. 12 oz / 350 ml is much more common drinking glass size here.

People going to McDonalds for soda get 32 ounce / 950 ml

Some crazy sizes here...

You are spot on. There's even a local fast food chain "Giraffa's" that serves that - slow cooked food, then microwaved/heated in shop premises and sold as fastfood.

The typical average Brazilian lunch is loaded with overcooked dishes - read: wasted nutrients, dripping with vegetable oil and sugar (fructose and others), occasionally covered with a couple of lettuce leaves and freshly sliced tomatoes.

I thought beans is good nutrition wise?

They are, but the way their are (over)cooked may lead to loss of great chunk of nutrients.

They may be loaded with lard or bacon fat. Not sure if that's the case in Brazil.

You might even get mashed sweet potatoes when you want mashed potatoes, as I learned the hard way.

> " 'pizza' with copious amounts of sugary ketchup (don't ask)."

Only in Rio.

don't forget the caipirinha, usually a double or triple shot of sugarcane rum mixed with sugar syrup and fruit juice (more sugar)... sometimes served with granulated cane sugar on the rim of the glass. needless to say, it gets you hammered in a hurry. or the local beer...

honestly i think the healthiest restaurant food i saw in brazil was the appetizer salad bar at the churrascaria, which is of course the kind of place where you eat until you literally can eat no more.

and, i'm fairly certain brazil was an extreme early adopter of pay-by-the-kilo buffets, if not the birthplace.

the traditional non-european food (apart from churr.) is basically modernized slave food - huge amounts of carb-based calories and deep fried food, for cheap, usually in the form of dense stews with starchy sides. southern/cajun food is very similar.

luckily, brazilians are an incredibly active people whose entertainment culture is centered around outdoor activities, and most of them do not indulge in meals out very often, but as with all other societies that become more affluent over time, the modern less-active lifestyle mixed with the traditional diet is not good.

Oh man... so much (wrong) bias about Brazil :/

What's the point of a statement like that if you don't elaborate?

it's tough seeing your country analyzed by an outsider. here, i'll do the same thing with my home country, america.

americans primarily eat cheap feedlot-produced beef and chicken, often in the form of fast food such as mcdonalds. the majority of beverages consumed are alcoholic or laden with sugar.

in the south, most of the cuisine is largely modernized slave food and plantation food. cigarettes and rum are, or were until recently, consumed in large quantities, made from sugar and tobacco which was the backbone of the slave economy in the gulf/caribbean region.

there is also an emphasis on quantity, with people oftentimes eating or serving more to a person than they can actually eat in a single meal. people frequently take the remainder to go, although many force themselves to finish.

unfortunately, americans' entertainment culture revolves around watching tv so the effects of overeating are compounded and result in epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

is this true? is this biased? does this apply to berkeley, ca as well as it does to dallas, texas?

this doesn't describe me as an american, yet it's undoubtedly true, uncomfortable, and critical as it may be.

the truth hurts.

well i would have mentioned all the german cuisine in the south but we wouldn't want to remind everyone of that pesky nazi situation, would we?

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