Brazil Is the New America: How Brazil Offers Upward Mobility in a Collapsing World (42 page)

According to a 2010 report on the Reuters newswire, nearly half of adult Brazilians are overweight, and 15 percent are obese. The story quotes Brazil's health minister José Gomes Temporão, as saying, “if we stay at this pace, in 10 years, we will have two thirds of the population overweight (or obese) as has happened in the United States.”
7

Unfortunately, more and more Brazilian waistlines are bulging, betraying the country's image as a haven for buff sun worshipers. Among Brazilians between 20 and 24 years old, the percentage of overweight women has shot up to 48 percent from 28.7 percent in a previous national survey (1996–1997). Whereas a decade ago and earlier the beach on Ipanema was crowded with beauties, today about half of them look like the stereotypical overweight American.

It is a sign of the times that the Brazilian magazine
CartaCapital
, published in conjunction with
The Economist
, ran a photo of an obese woman cavorting on a sparkling, white sand beach, with a warning that a mere 50 to 100 excess calories per day can result in obesity.
8
On the lighter side, the report also emphasized that Brazil still has a long way to go to sink as far into obesity as the United States where 70 percent of adults carry excessive weight, 30 percent are obese, and 10 percent are morbidly obese. More shocking still is the projection from researchers at Johns Hopkins University that essentially all American adults will be overweight by the year 2048 if present trends continue.
9

For a lover of Brazilian women, seeing this country move along the same trajectory as the United States in the direction of obesity is a sad sight. It is also an instructive one from an investment perspective. It suggests that Brazil is a country where the opportunities and risks may be tending to follow a template based upon its stage of economic development, rather than being more directly informed by peculiarities of Brazilian culture, much less genetics.

Unfortunately, for lovers of beautiful women, Brasileiras are tending to get fatter in proportion to income growth. Women in the south of Brazil, the country's wealthiest region are fatter than those in the north. And obesity is growing most rapidly among those whose incomes have risen the most. Wealthier women in the cities tend to be chubbier than poor women in the countryside. The one bright spot to show up in nationwide surveys undertaken in Brazil since 1975 was a hint that the obesity among the wealthiest segment of Brazilian women in the southeastern region tended to drop as their commitment to physical exercise rose after 1989. This seems to be unique among developing countries.
10
No others seem to have any distinct demographic segments that are making countertrend headway against obesity. This may reflect the uneven development of Brazil, concentrated in the southeastern region of this vast country. The states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais, encompass an area greater than seven core states of the European Union—Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, and Germany—combined. In the immortal words of George W. Bush, “Wow, Brazil is big.” Brazil's industrialized southeastern region, about one-tenth of the country, with a population of about 75 million, is more comparable to a middle-income country than to a developing economy one.

The apparently established trend for higher-income women in Brazil to counteract the slide toward obesity through exercise suggests a bright future for operators of health clubs in Brazil and purveyors of exercise clothes and equipment, like Track & Field, the high-end Brazilian brand now expanding into the United States. Its first stateside shop opened on the Upper East Side of New York close to Central Park at Madison Avenue and 77th Street.

The growth of chubbiness also has grim implications for health care costs. It implies a future of declining marginal returns for health care spending in Brazil, following along the lines of the astonishing plunge in marginal returns on health care spending in the United States. As you may remember from the footnotes of the debate surrounding Obamacare, the United States spends twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other advanced economy, without achieving any measurable benefit in terms of improved health outcomes. Among the grim correlates of increased consumption of high fructose corn syrup, in addition to growing nonalcoholic cirrhosis, are surging heart and kidney disease, all of which contribute to soaring health care costs.

It is notable that the stage of economic development tends to be more telling in informing the propensity to fat than apparently distinctive genetic and cultural factors. Across the G-20, North America is by far the fattest continent, with Mexico joining Canada and the United States near the top of the obesity scale. The high-income British settlement colonies also are standouts for obesity, even more than the United Kingdom itself. Canadians, Australians, the British, and Germans all have their issues with fat. Italians and French are less prone to obesity.

The Japanese are outliers. They have enjoyed the world's second-richest economy through the last quarter of the twentieth century. But just about the only fat people in Japan are sumo wrestlers who stuff themselves remorselessly in a concerted effort to gain weight.

The question is whether and to what extent other countries, such as Brazil, may have a cultural/genetic advantage that tends to obviate the impact of growing real income in leading to obesity. Approximately 1 percent of the Brazilian population is of Japanese ancestry, implying that Brazil might share to a minor degree in any genetic factors that contribute to Japanese remaining lean.

What does the record show? There is strong evidence that people of Japanese descent, as with other immigrant groups in Brazil, are rapidly assimilated as Brazilians. This was underscored late in the past century when the Japanese government, aware of the demographic problems presented by plunging population, decided to solicit Brazilians of Japanese ancestry to return to Japan. The government reasoned that because of their Japanese ancestry Japanese-Brazilians would be more readily accepted in Japan. Special legislation was passed in 1990, giving the descendants of Japanese in Brazil priority status in immigrating back to Japan.

Contrary to expectations, however, it soon became evident that the “returning Japanese” from Brazil were no longer Japanese but Brazilian. As one account put it, “Despite their Japanese appearance, Brazilians in Japan are culturally Brazilians, usually only speaking Portuguese, and are treated as foreigners.”
11
While I am only guessing, I suppose that the body fat profile of Japanese has more to do with their diet and physical activity than their genome. Whether this is reflected among Brazilians of Japanese descent is complicated by the fact that Brazil's distinctive culture is likely to have played a role by thoroughly mixing the country's gene pool.

The thorough mixing of the country's gene pool first occurred to me as I began to wonder why Brazilian women have long enjoyed a reputation for great beauty. Let me explain. If you are looking for a succinct definition of beauty one of the best is the regularity and symmetry of the features. Perhaps the best way to attain regularity and symmetry of features is by thoroughly stirring and mixing the human gene pool. This is what Brazilian culture has done. As the Austrian author Stefan Zweig wrote almost three-quarters of a century ago in
Brazil: A Land of the Future
:

. . .for centuries the Brazilian nation has been established on one principle alone, that of free and unrestrained intermixing, that total equality of black and white and brown and yellow. What in other countries is only set down theoretically on paper and parchment, absolute civil equality in public and private life, has a visible effect here in the real sphere. . . . It is touching to see even the children, who vary through all shades of human skin color—chocolate milk and coffee—come from school arm in arm. . . . this whole thing constantly mixed itself together, interbred, and was refreshed by the constant influx of new blood through the centuries. Having come here from all European countries and finally, with the Japanese, from Asia, these blood groups are incessantly multiplied and varied in innumerable crosses and hybrids within the borders of Brazil. All shades, all nuances of physiology and character can be found here. Anyone who crosses the street in Rio sees more peculiarly mixed and already indeterminable types in an hour than he would otherwise see in another city in a year.
12

As a result, Zweig concluded, “Seldom can we see more beautiful women and children anywhere in the world.”

Taking this at face value as an informing factor in beauty, there is the further question of whether high-speed “race mixing” makes for a healthier, leaner population. To my knowledge, this is a subject that has never been researched. But the fact that the United States, Canada, and Australia are among the fattest countries on the globe suggests otherwise. All three countries have populations comprised of immigrants from all over.

The United States has frequently been perceived as the great melting pot. During its dynamic period, the culture of the United States attracted immigrants to assimilate. No longer. Today's immigrants to the United States tend to segregate themselves in ethnic enclaves and continue speaking their original languages. As Zweig observed over 70 years ago, Brazil is the world's most thoroughly stirred melting pot. Genetically and culturally, Brazil is a much more integrated society than the United States. If there are health benefits from thoroughly mixing the genomes of various populations, they should be more evident in Brazil.

On the other hand, especially where obesity is concerned, it is equally conceivable that the populations that have been exposed to the traditional Western diet over the longest time may be better adapted to it. There is strong evidence that some peoples, who have only recently begun eating Western-style diets, are more prone to obesity and Type II diabetes than those of European descent. Polynesian immigrants to New Zealand, for example, are dramatically overrepresented among the ranks of the morbidly obese. They are disproportionately diabetic and more prone to suffer from other ailments aggravated by being overweight.

Equally, there is evidence that the general health of Brazilians has been improved in at least one sense because of the more complete assimilation of immigrant groups in Brazil. A striking example of this is provided by the different experience of Arab immigration to the United States and to Brazil. Notably, nineteenth-century Muslim immigration to both countries, mostly from the Ottoman Empire, did not lead to the formation of distinctive Islamic communities. Most immigrants were rapidly absorbed into the wider American or Brazilian society.

More recently, however, Arab immigration to the United States has led to the formation of distinctive Arab-American communities. Arab-American associations estimate that there are 3.5 million Americans of Arab descent.
13
As time has passed, they have proven ever less likely to assimilate. There are an estimated 1.8 million practicing Muslims in the United States.
14

By contrast, as reported in the
Washington Times
, few of Brazil's estimated 10 million descendants of Arab immigrants even realize that they have Arab ancestry.
15
A recent census showed only 27,000 Brazilians claimed to be practicing Muslims. Why the very low level of identification as Arabs among Brazilians of Arab descent? Because they don't form distinctive communities. Intermarriage between Brazilians of Arab descent and other Brazilians, regardless of ethnic ancestry or religious affiliation, is very high; few Brazilians of Arab descent have more than one parent of Arab origin. Consequently, new generations of Brazilians of Arab descent show no ongoing affiliation with Arab culture. Only a few speak any Arabic. Instead the vast majority, especially those of younger generations, speak only Portuguese:

“Assimilation and integration have been so strong that sometimes it is difficult, if not impossible, to know who in this country is of Arab descent and who is not,” São Paulo State Governor Geraldo Alckmin said at a recent meeting of Brazilian and Arab businessmen. “About 10 million Arabs live in Brazil, giving it the largest Arab population outside the Middle East,” said Antonio Sarkis, president of the Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce.
16

Although Brazil may have a higher representation of Arab blood in the population than the United States, the country has until recently been almost entirely free of Islamic terrorism-related events. This apparent immunity to the troubles arising from what Samuel Huntington described as the clash of civilizations, came to an abrupt end early in April 2011 when a Brazilian Muslim opened fire on Tasso da Silveira primary school in Rio de Janeiro. The shooter, Wellington Oliveira, killed 10 girls and 2 boys and wounded 12 others before committing suicide after being shot in the legs by Brazilian police. Oliveira's neighbors and relatives described him as a “nearly friendless, introverted man” who had recently converted to Islam from being a Jehovah's Witness.
17

A good thing about Brazil has been its apparent immunity to the violence, tribulation, and social costs arising from the clash of civilizations. Now there is unwelcome evidence that even a highly integrated country with a distinctive culture cannot remain entirely aloof from the random antics of homicidal maniacs. Where such terrorism doesn't arise from ethnic groups harboring grievances, similar grievances can be transmitted to “nearly friendless, introverted” weirdos over the Internet.

Apparently, even Jehovah's Witnesses can be converted into terrorists if they have a reliable, broadband connection. One of the troubles with Brazil is that if lunacy is a modern contagion transmitted over the Internet then Brazil will be increasingly exposed as broadband coverage grows. According to Internet World Stats, 34.4 percent of Brazilian households were wired in 2010, as compared with 74 percent in the United States.
18