A shocking documentary has revealed the extent of the damage caused by Nestlé’s “Floating Supermarket” in the depths of the Amazon as children as young as 7 are affected by soaring obesity rates and diabetes caused by the availability of ultra-processed junk foods.
The dangers of a diet high in ultra-processed food are well-documented and no secret, but little is done to curb the prevalence of these destructive junk foods.
Nestlé’s “Floating Supermarket” Hits The Amazon
In the shocking documentary we have already covered, it would appear that a Nestlé “floating supermarket” popped up in the remote Brazilian settlement of Muaná, which lies upstream from a tributary that flows into the Amazon’s estuary.
According to The Daily Mail, Dr. Chris van Tulleken said: “I’ve been to the Amazon several times as a doctor, ten or twelve years ago, in quite remote places and really I just can’t remember ever seeing anyone who was overweight.”
He added: “I want to find out, are the children here becoming overweight? In a culture, an environment, where historically it has been calorifically quite poor – what happens when you flood them with masses of what we would call processed, industrialised food?”
A woman curious to find out what was driving the skyrocketing obesity in the area discovered that there was a “floating supermarket” sent by Nestlé in the area.
The Nestlé “floating supermarket” which would come to town once a week between 2010-2017 is blamed as the turning point for the region’s obesity crisis.
Nestlé’s “floating supermarket” would sell ultra-processed foods at a cheaper rate than other local market produce and stayed open for longer hours than nearby shops, adding to its allure.
The region has seen children as young as seven suffer from high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes as the obesity rate for the rest of the country has increased 150% since 2002.
Local headteacher Paula Costa Fehera said: “There has been a rise in child diabetes child obesity and high cholesterol in children as young as seven.”
“Eating habits have changed a lot in the past 15 years with lots more industrialised products we didn’t used to have. Before we used to have a lot of fish, shrimp, red meat, chicken and everything was fresh,” She added.
The Dangers of Ultra-Processed Food
We recently published an article where Dr van Tulleken ate nothing but ultra-processed food for a month and documented a myriad of health problems that occurred by the end of the experiment and lingered after the cessation of his dismal diet.
“A mere four weeks — that’s all it took for me to pile on enough fat to move from being a healthy weight to being overweight, putting my health at real risk.
At the same time, my thinking became sluggish and I slept badly, lying in bed racked with anxiety, sweating with fears about everyday life. I developed heartburn as well as constipation. I got piles.
But worst of all, my brain rewired itself just as if I had developed an addiction to a drug of abuse. How did I wreak such terrible damage?”
The layman’s definition of an ultra-processed food is basically the following: the food must be prepared in a factory, wrapped in plastic and contain an ingredient you wouldn’t normally find in a home kitchen, such as emulsifiers, stabilisers, humectants (moisteners) or preservatives.
Although many UPFs make absolutely no claim to be healthy – chicken nuggets, microwaveable burgers, ready meals – others, such as sandwiches, bread products, cereals and low-calorie foods, do. Dr van Tulleken’s research shows just how much of a deception this really is.
Dr Chris Van Tulleken, before and after his month of eating UPFs image courtesy of dailymail.co.uk
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