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Comment by dasil003 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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.

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