What Brazil is doing to promote healthy diets and active lifestyles

Abstract

Objectives: To present the way the Brazilian government is addressing the prevention of nutrition-related non-communicable diseases (NR-NCDs). Results: Innovative legislative and regulatory actions, mass communications and capacity building have been combined to create a comprehensive approach for addressing poor dietary and activity patterns in Brazil that are leading to obesity and NR-NCDs. Included are new nutrition-related initiatives in the labelling area, shifts in the types of food purchased for the school food programme, use of mass media to communicate components of the food guidelines, establishment of a smart shopping initiative, and training of teachers and health workers. Conclusions: The entire effort has taken several years to get underway. This paper describes the process and some of the initial changes seen. Keywords Brazil Health promotion Healthy diets Active lifestylesChanges in the nutritional status of the Brazilian population have been intense in the last quarter of the 20th century 1,2 . Although undernutrition systematically declined from 1975 to 1997 for all ages, regions and income groups, nutritional deficiencies are still important in the country, particularly among lower-income children living in the north-eastern region. Obesity has increased, in the same time period, throughout the country among older children, adolescents and adults, with the single exception of middle-and higher-income, adult women in the south-eastern region -for whom the trends towards increased obesity seem to have stopped or even reversed in the 1990s. Undernutrition largely predominated over obesity in all regions and age groups of the Brazilian population in 1975, while in 1997, the same picture was only seen among lower-income, younger children. Evidence of simultaneous changes towards high energydense diets and lower energy expenditure patterns was also documented across the country, as well as the increasing importance of diet-and sedentary-lifestylerelated non-communicable diseases.To cope with these rapid changes, the Brazilian government has been working at the national and local level to initiate a wide range of activities to address these emerging needs. A new national food and nutrition policy has been developed following a wide-ranging set of discussions, meetings and negotiations between the Ministry of Health, relevant parts of Brazilian civil society (scholars, professional and scientific associations, workers' unions, representatives of private companies, and others) and other relevant governmental bodies (including those linked to the economic, agricultural, education and law sectors) 3 . The main goal of the new policy is essentially to promote, protect and support eating practices and lifestyles conducive to optimum nutritional and health status for all.This new policy attempts to continue to combat nutritional deficiencies with focused and targeted integrated interventions. It also attempts to shift increasing attention towards the prevention of nutritional disorders associated wi...

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