"O sabor da prosperidade

Abstract

The act of eating, besides nutrition, is an act of imagination, as it involves memories, perceptions of social reality, and people's aspirations for a better future. Brazil and China have been experiencing over the past decades an expansion of access to consumption, and at the same time a nutritional transition, making food consumption a key issue to be investigated in these countries. Food production is seen as a resource-intensive industry, and these processes represent a major challenge to sustainable development with global impact. The urgency of our current ecological context creates authoritarian and moral discourses around consumption that focus on calculating the magnitude of the impact on nature without taking into account the perceptions and desires of the individual consumer. In the face of climate change, responsibilities and vulnerabilities are unevenly distributed from a geographical and class perspective, thus it is necessary to understand the transformations and changes in subjectivities emerging from developing countries. The discussion focuses on understanding the interconnection between development processes, nutritional transition experiences, and sustainability considerations in China and Brazil. In this context, meat occupies a central place in both Brazilian and Chinese society: while it is seen as a highly valued food and marker of social mobility across different generations in China and Brazil, meat now also carries new meanings linked to its high environmental impact. Meat consumption mobilizes memories of deprivation and class mobility as well as dreams of achieving a better life, and its value is being discussed and re-signified intergenerationally. Young urban consumers in these countries bring new ideas, such as environmental issues, to food consumption, and in this way influence the food consumption practices of older generations. Therefore, college students in Shanghai, China and Campinas, Brazil who have stopped or reduced their meat consumption (some consider themselves vegetarian or vegan) were chosen to investigate their reasons, motivations, aspirations, changes in their sociability, and the ways they have brought environmental issues to the family table. Food consumption and the new role of Sustainability require an intercultural, intergenerational and global debate in order to build an inclusive and just path towards Food Justice. Understanding these intergenerational narratives on food and sustainability will allow Brazil and China to contribute with their perspectives in building a shared future in times of global climate change.