There are now more than 700 million obese people worldwide, 108 million of them children, reported the New York Times in 2017. In Brazil, food giant Nestle sends vendors door-to-door hawking its high-calorie junk food and giving customers a full month to pay for their purchases. Nestle calls the junk food hawkers, who are themselves obese, “micro-entrepreneurs.”
Big Food is increasingly targeting poor countries as “emerging markets” to please Wall Street and shareholders — perhaps because getting people fat and hooked on junk food in rich countries has plateaued.
Supplanting the indigenous diets of people in poor countries with fast food, packaged goods, and soft drinks is unethical for many reasons. In addition to creating obesity, diabetes, heart disease, chronic illnesses, and dental degradation, the junk food supplants subsistence agriculture crops.
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