11 ms·

Western fast food companies are aggressively expanding in Brazil

100 points by acalmon 9y ago

QAPereo 9y ago
I don't doubt that this is all true, but he diet pre-Nestle was hardly superb, Brigadeiro, flan, lots of meat, croquettes, tons of bread... you could do plenty of harm with those traditional foods. What the were not however, was heavily and aggressively marketed, ultra-cheap, and essentially never spoil.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  The traditional meal of beans, rice, meat and veggies, is much better than a lot of countries. Even the "junk" foods you mention are still considerably better than empty corporate garbage like cheetos and soda pop.
  - jsemrau 9y ago
    Especially considering pre-processed foods. Even though there use pie charts (no pun intended), I liked this visualization. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/what-the-world-eats/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/what-the-world-eats/ https://fstoppers.com/food/what-week-groceries-looks-around-world-3251 https://fstoppers.com/food/what-week-groceries-looks-around-...
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    I think you'd be surprised on the snack front, but soda is addictive poison, that's true enough. The issue with the traditional diet is that it only worked when food was somewhat scarce. Even without the influx of 1st World crap accelerating the obesity/diabetes issue, those problems would remain. I'm not denying the role of Coke, Nestle, McDonalds, etc in amplifying an existing problem into a full blown catastrophe however.
crazygringo 9y ago
As an American who lived in Brazil for 8 years, honestly I'm not sure this is any worse than traditional food. A typical Brazilian lunch is a piece of meat with beans, sides of rice, french fries, and fried flour (farofa) -- that's right, 3 carbs of empty calories (2 fried) and no real vegetables -- all washed down with mostly-added-sugar "fruit juice concentrate" (cashew apple is really common). Bar snacks are 100% deep-fried, or "pizza" with copious amounts of sugary ketchup (don't ask). Desserts are the sweetest things your tongue has ever touched -- brigadeiros, pudim, essentially all just super-sweet condensed milk. It's not like the traditional Brazilian diet is full of fresh veggies or nutritional variety at all. I mean, I thought us Americans loved our french fries... but the Brazilians have got us beat!
- Natsu 9y ago
  You might even get mashed sweet potatoes when you want mashed potatoes, as I learned the hard way.
- flachsechs 9y ago
  don't forget the caipirinha, usually a double or triple shot of sugarcane rum mixed with sugar syrup and fruit juice (more sugar)... sometimes served with granulated cane sugar on the rim of the glass. needless to say, it gets you hammered in a hurry. or the local beer... honestly i think the healthiest restaurant food i saw in brazil was the appetizer salad bar at the churrascaria, which is of course the kind of place where you eat until you literally can eat no more. and, i'm fairly certain brazil was an extreme early adopter of pay-by-the-kilo buffets, if not the birthplace. the traditional non-european food (apart from churr.) is basically modernized slave food - huge amounts of carb-based calories and deep fried food, for cheap, usually in the form of dense stews with starchy sides. southern/cajun food is very similar. luckily, brazilians are an incredibly active people whose entertainment culture is centered around outdoor activities, and most of them do not indulge in meals out very often, but as with all other societies that become more affluent over time, the modern less-active lifestyle mixed with the traditional diet is not good.
  - lerax 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
valuearb 9y ago
How do you hook people on better tasting food? You let them try it.
- quadrangle 9y ago
  Indeed, just like drug pushers.
hackerpolicy 9y ago
Not to mention we brazilians have been bombarded with fast-food joints in the past few years. My little hometown with no more than 90k habitants got its first Subway. And last year the first Taco Bell in the country came to São Paulo. This is the only one I would miss actually, as I've had enough from the traditional fast-food places.
shihching 9y ago
> At one meeting, a representative from the food industry accused Anvisa of trying to subvert parental authority, saying mothers had the right to decide what to feed their children, recalled Vanessa Schottz, a nutrition advocate. The same argument is used in the US to thwart limitations on sugary beverage purchases and other junk food with SNAP -- these compose 10-20% of purchases, 50% of which goes to Wal-Mart, alongside 2-5x greater premature mortality from cardiac arrest and diabetic related complications. http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303608 http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.3... Incentivizing the poor to hock Nestle timed according to Brazilian food assistance checks is clever. Reminds me of Herbalife, and Betting on Zero -- Hispanic populations, eager to succeed in entrepreneurship, here too are victims of pyramid schemes preying on ill health.
- icelancer 9y ago
  >>The same argument is used in the US to thwart limitations on sugary beverage purchases and other junk food with SNAP Those living under the poverty line don't like being hit with condescending statements coming from those who are supposedly trying to help them, either. Conservatives/Republicans at least call the poor lazy. Liberals/Democrats who want to restrict sugar/luxury items from EBT/SNAP often make ridiculous statements about "knowing better for them," which you can imagine plays real well in their population. I've collected EBT with a family and been under the poverty line. I know very well how people think and feel about those above them. Sometimes the single father or mother of two kids who struggles with daycare and a tough job 10 hours a day with 2 hours of commute time would like to buy their kids some ice cream and "bad" food to escape from the terrible life they have, rather than eat some broccoli or toasted kale. Let's have some sympathy.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    Yep. There's a deeply embedded mentality even amongst most social liberals in the US that poverty and moral/personal failure must go together, and thus we need to tell poor people how they're allowed to spend what little we're willing to give them. See also "but what if I give them some money and they use it to buy booze?" Heck, if I was homeless I know I'd want a drink. But then on the flip side, we'll also spin the blame around on whoever else is available too. So maybe it's just that it's easier to blame than to fix. "Big business" got Brazil hooked on junk food -- not like good ol' America, where we got hooked on junk food back when it was still small business!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nextstep 9y ago
Change the title to reflect the focus on fast food (use The NY Times headline).
Animats 9y ago
Japan seems to have fought this off. Japan has explicitly rejected "fat acceptance" as public policy. Under the 2008 "Metabo Law", everyone between 40 and 75 is weighed and measured annually and sent to counseling if overweight. Employers are involved and apply pressure to employees.
- candiodari 9y ago
  > Employers are involved and apply pressure to employees. That sounds like hell.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    Japanese corporate culture is already like this, so it's likely just another pressure like going out nights for team drinks, etc.
  - hkmurakami 9y ago
    Eh, it wasn't too bad tbh, and my employer was one of the most traditionally run in the country. Mostly the company handing out free step counters to those who wanted it. There might have been some very modest financial incentives given out as well.
  - adventured 9y ago
    It is hell, for someone not used to it or someone over the fat line. Google "Japan fat shaming" for some idea of how abusive they are toward fat people culturally. They're not the only ones though, South Korea and China also have weaker variations of aggressive cultural fat shaming.
    - bragh 9y ago
      It always seemed that South Korea's attitude was harsher thanks to the manhwa (especially Lookism). But now that I think about it, Japanese manga do not even feature fat characters unless they are completely irredeemable social outcasts.
    - binarray2000 9y ago
sagivo 9y ago
In Israel fast food costs more than normal food. Vegetables are relatively cheep to the US ($3 for avocado??) And in general "fast" food is not a value people appreciate over "healthy". One of the ways to fight obesity is by taxation and lowering the costs of healthy food. When salad will cost less than a burger (and there's no economic reason it shouldn't) people will choose it.
- rabuke 9y ago
  Don't make it sound like taxation and some legislation is making salad cheaper, it's just that everything is so expensive here you think a 15$ salad is normal.
- r00fus 9y ago
  Not sure where you're seeing the $3 avocados. Even in SV, it's like $1 per unless things have changed in the last several weeks.
  - sagivo 9y ago
    NYC, and untill recently every whole foods store
    - r00fus 9y ago
      https://www.hassavocadoboard.com/retail/volume-and-price-data https://www.hassavocadoboard.com/retail/volume-and-price-dat... This aligns with my recent shopping experience.
      - sagivo 9y ago
        I think you're missing the point of vegetables being expensive in the US. If you think these prices are normal than allow me to disagree. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/business/amazon-whole-foods-cheaper-prices.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/business/amazon-whole-foo... https://imgur.com/a/6yozr https://imgur.com/a/6yozr
grecy 9y ago
I saw McDonalds being built in dirt-street towns in Guatemala, I saw lines three blocks long at KFC in South America, and I've seen many Porsches and Ferrarris in the parking lots of American fast food joints in third world countries. I am utterly shocked they have not moved into Africa yet. I've just driven tens of thousands of miles through 17 countries without a single Mcdonalds. Between Morocco and South Africa, there were none [1]. I am shocked they are not in at least Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana, etc. I wonder if that's the longest distance in the world that can be driven without one. Or at least the most consecutive countries. (checkout the map) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_McDonald's_restaurants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_McDonal...
- mwidell 9y ago
  Someone did this research for the US: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6380193/McFarthest-point-in-the-US-from-a-McDonalds.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6380...
- adventured 9y ago
  > I am utterly shocked they have not moved into Africa yet. Africa's (generalizing) median income has just begun to climb high enough in the last 10-15 years, to be financially interesting to the US fast-food companies. Nigeria's GDP in 1999 was... $35 billion, for a population of 119 million people, or roughly $300 per capita. That leaves very little money in the bottom 2/3 for buying fast-food. Today Nigeria's GDP is closer to ~$400 billion for 186 million people (call it $2,000 per capita), a tremendous leap in economic capability. Many other nations in Africa have seen similar results. Consider that Kenya's GDP at a low point in 1993, was just $5 or $6 billion.... It's $70 billion today. Or Ethiopia, from $7.x billion in 2002, to $72 billion today and still climbing rapidly. Most likely these nations become appealing business opportunities for all sorts of foreign companies (whether US or European or Chinese etc), with the rapidly rising disposable incomes.
- cdubzzz 9y ago
  There was a KFC in Accra back in 2011 or so when I was there, so they are definitely in Ghana, at least.
hellofunk 9y ago
This makes me sad for Brazil. I have heard, though cannot confirm myself, that Japan had one of the healthiest societies in the world until fast food expanded there a couple decades ago, causing many problems common in the States, like obesity and diabetes and blood pressure issues, to significantly increase in frequency there.
- adventured 9y ago
  It's worth noting that Latin America has plenty of nations that have struggled with obesity due to poor local diets even longer than the US has, including Mexico, Chile, Belize, Brazil and El Salvador. The US obesity problem began in the late 1980s.
Grue3 9y ago
So, Brazil is not a Western country? I guess the entire Europe is The East now. Also, why wouldn't they? It's a big market. Everyone loves fast food even though you'll never see anyone admit it.
- distances 9y ago
  I'm sure you know this, but "Western country" doesn't strictly refer to a geographical location. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
gcb0 9y ago
they claim that a universal income (bolsa familia) is responsible for poor people buying tons of sugary foods. in reality that universal income allows poor people to not starve. why do they buy crap food? because that's what middle class is also eating. why? because of recently unregulated and rampant advertising.
gcb0 9y ago
title is completely off. its not fast food (Mcdonalds, wendy, etc) but junk food (nestle, kellogs, kraft, etc)
- BoppreH 9y ago
  The article focuses on junk food, but it's both. Until recently in medium-sized Brazilian cities, the only fast food chains an American would recognize are McDonald's and Subway. This changed since the last two years. In a short span of time I saw new franchises of KFC, Pizza Hut, Domino's and Burger King.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    those companies are there for at least 10 years! at least! pizza hut over 15. kfc over 10. bk over 7. ...but well, those companies increasing presence explain why the corrupt coup government rushing to sell the country just passed laws removing low-wage workers protection.
ucaetano 9y ago
I find the title of this link quite funny: Brazil is a western country, even more "west" than Switzerland, where Nestle is from, and with very similar culture to that of Western Europe and the US. Not only that, but Nestle has been in Brazil for almost a century now.
ingenieros 9y ago
I think it's also important to point out that it's not just "western fast food" conglomerates doing all the damage. Frito Lay (Pepsi Co.) had its job cut out for them by local junk food producers so they simply bought them out and stuck their logo on the bag. Bimbo which is a Mexican giant in the processed food industry has been doing exactly the same all across the Andean region. Another very important thing to keep in mind which this article fails to mention is the influence of all the free trade agreements which were signed by countries like Colombia and Perú in recent years. Now it's become more affordable than ever to export "goods" from the U.S into these emerging markets without paying any import duties. That is why you now find supermarkets in emerging nations that bare a strikingly resemblance to their american counterparts. A quick glance through the frozen food section will reveal items that weren't even part of the local diet just a few years ago such as pot pies and tater tots.

100 points by acalmon 9y ago

I don't doubt that this is all true, but he diet pre-Nestle was hardly superb, Brigadeiro, flan, lots of meat, croquettes, tons of bread... you could do plenty of harm with those traditional foods. What the were not however, was heavily and aggressively marketed, ultra-cheap, and essentially never spoil.

mixmastamyk 9y ago
The traditional meal of beans, rice, meat and veggies, is much better than a lot of countries. Even the "junk" foods you mention are still considerably better than empty corporate garbage like cheetos and soda pop.
- jsemrau 9y ago
  Especially considering pre-processed foods. Even though there use pie charts (no pun intended), I liked this visualization. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/what-the-world-eats/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/what-the-world-eats/ https://fstoppers.com/food/what-week-groceries-looks-around-world-3251 https://fstoppers.com/food/what-week-groceries-looks-around-...
- QAPereo 9y ago
  I think you'd be surprised on the snack front, but soda is addictive poison, that's true enough. The issue with the traditional diet is that it only worked when food was somewhat scarce. Even without the influx of 1st World crap accelerating the obesity/diabetes issue, those problems would remain. I'm not denying the role of Coke, Nestle, McDonalds, etc in amplifying an existing problem into a full blown catastrophe however.

crazygringo 9y ago

As an American who lived in Brazil for 8 years, honestly I'm not sure this is any worse than traditional food. A typical Brazilian lunch is a piece of meat with beans, sides of rice, french fries, and fried flour (farofa) -- that's right, 3 carbs of empty calories (2 fried) and no real vegetables -- all washed down with mostly-added-sugar "fruit juice concentrate" (cashew apple is really common). Bar snacks are 100% deep-fried, or "pizza" with copious amounts of sugary ketchup (don't ask). Desserts are the sweetest things your tongue has ever touched -- brigadeiros, pudim, essentially all just super-sweet condensed milk. It's not like the traditional Brazilian diet is full of fresh veggies or nutritional variety at all. I mean, I thought us Americans loved our french fries... but the Brazilians have got us beat!

Natsu 9y ago
You might even get mashed sweet potatoes when you want mashed potatoes, as I learned the hard way.
flachsechs 9y ago
don't forget the caipirinha, usually a double or triple shot of sugarcane rum mixed with sugar syrup and fruit juice (more sugar)... sometimes served with granulated cane sugar on the rim of the glass. needless to say, it gets you hammered in a hurry. or the local beer... honestly i think the healthiest restaurant food i saw in brazil was the appetizer salad bar at the churrascaria, which is of course the kind of place where you eat until you literally can eat no more. and, i'm fairly certain brazil was an extreme early adopter of pay-by-the-kilo buffets, if not the birthplace. the traditional non-european food (apart from churr.) is basically modernized slave food - huge amounts of carb-based calories and deep fried food, for cheap, usually in the form of dense stews with starchy sides. southern/cajun food is very similar. luckily, brazilians are an incredibly active people whose entertainment culture is centered around outdoor activities, and most of them do not indulge in meals out very often, but as with all other societies that become more affluent over time, the modern less-active lifestyle mixed with the traditional diet is not good.
- lerax 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

valuearb 9y ago

How do you hook people on better tasting food? You let them try it.

quadrangle 9y ago
Indeed, just like drug pushers.

hackerpolicy 9y ago

Not to mention we brazilians have been bombarded with fast-food joints in the past few years. My little hometown with no more than 90k habitants got its first Subway. And last year the first Taco Bell in the country came to São Paulo. This is the only one I would miss actually, as I've had enough from the traditional fast-food places.

shihching 9y ago

> At one meeting, a representative from the food industry accused Anvisa of trying to subvert parental authority, saying mothers had the right to decide what to feed their children, recalled Vanessa Schottz, a nutrition advocate. The same argument is used in the US to thwart limitations on sugary beverage purchases and other junk food with SNAP -- these compose 10-20% of purchases, 50% of which goes to Wal-Mart, alongside 2-5x greater premature mortality from cardiac arrest and diabetic related complications. http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303608 http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.3... Incentivizing the poor to hock Nestle timed according to Brazilian food assistance checks is clever. Reminds me of Herbalife, and Betting on Zero -- Hispanic populations, eager to succeed in entrepreneurship, here too are victims of pyramid schemes preying on ill health.

icelancer 9y ago
>>The same argument is used in the US to thwart limitations on sugary beverage purchases and other junk food with SNAP Those living under the poverty line don't like being hit with condescending statements coming from those who are supposedly trying to help them, either. Conservatives/Republicans at least call the poor lazy. Liberals/Democrats who want to restrict sugar/luxury items from EBT/SNAP often make ridiculous statements about "knowing better for them," which you can imagine plays real well in their population. I've collected EBT with a family and been under the poverty line. I know very well how people think and feel about those above them. Sometimes the single father or mother of two kids who struggles with daycare and a tough job 10 hours a day with 2 hours of commute time would like to buy their kids some ice cream and "bad" food to escape from the terrible life they have, rather than eat some broccoli or toasted kale. Let's have some sympathy.
- majormajor 9y ago
  Yep. There's a deeply embedded mentality even amongst most social liberals in the US that poverty and moral/personal failure must go together, and thus we need to tell poor people how they're allowed to spend what little we're willing to give them. See also "but what if I give them some money and they use it to buy booze?" Heck, if I was homeless I know I'd want a drink. But then on the flip side, we'll also spin the blame around on whoever else is available too. So maybe it's just that it's easier to blame than to fix. "Big business" got Brazil hooked on junk food -- not like good ol' America, where we got hooked on junk food back when it was still small business!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nextstep 9y ago

Change the title to reflect the focus on fast food (use The NY Times headline).

Animats 9y ago

Japan seems to have fought this off. Japan has explicitly rejected "fat acceptance" as public policy. Under the 2008 "Metabo Law", everyone between 40 and 75 is weighed and measured annually and sent to counseling if overweight. Employers are involved and apply pressure to employees.

candiodari 9y ago
> Employers are involved and apply pressure to employees. That sounds like hell.
- r00fus 9y ago
  Japanese corporate culture is already like this, so it's likely just another pressure like going out nights for team drinks, etc.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Eh, it wasn't too bad tbh, and my employer was one of the most traditionally run in the country. Mostly the company handing out free step counters to those who wanted it. There might have been some very modest financial incentives given out as well.
- adventured 9y ago
  It is hell, for someone not used to it or someone over the fat line. Google "Japan fat shaming" for some idea of how abusive they are toward fat people culturally. They're not the only ones though, South Korea and China also have weaker variations of aggressive cultural fat shaming.
  - bragh 9y ago
    It always seemed that South Korea's attitude was harsher thanks to the manhwa (especially Lookism). But now that I think about it, Japanese manga do not even feature fat characters unless they are completely irredeemable social outcasts.
  - binarray2000 9y ago

sagivo 9y ago

In Israel fast food costs more than normal food. Vegetables are relatively cheep to the US ($3 for avocado??) And in general "fast" food is not a value people appreciate over "healthy". One of the ways to fight obesity is by taxation and lowering the costs of healthy food. When salad will cost less than a burger (and there's no economic reason it shouldn't) people will choose it.

rabuke 9y ago
Don't make it sound like taxation and some legislation is making salad cheaper, it's just that everything is so expensive here you think a 15$ salad is normal.
r00fus 9y ago
Not sure where you're seeing the $3 avocados. Even in SV, it's like $1 per unless things have changed in the last several weeks.
- sagivo 9y ago
  NYC, and untill recently every whole foods store
  - r00fus 9y ago
    https://www.hassavocadoboard.com/retail/volume-and-price-data https://www.hassavocadoboard.com/retail/volume-and-price-dat... This aligns with my recent shopping experience.
    - sagivo 9y ago
      I think you're missing the point of vegetables being expensive in the US. If you think these prices are normal than allow me to disagree. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/business/amazon-whole-foods-cheaper-prices.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/business/amazon-whole-foo... https://imgur.com/a/6yozr https://imgur.com/a/6yozr

grecy 9y ago

I saw McDonalds being built in dirt-street towns in Guatemala, I saw lines three blocks long at KFC in South America, and I've seen many Porsches and Ferrarris in the parking lots of American fast food joints in third world countries. I am utterly shocked they have not moved into Africa yet. I've just driven tens of thousands of miles through 17 countries without a single Mcdonalds. Between Morocco and South Africa, there were none [1]. I am shocked they are not in at least Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana, etc. I wonder if that's the longest distance in the world that can be driven without one. Or at least the most consecutive countries. (checkout the map) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_McDonald's_restaurants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_McDonal...

mwidell 9y ago
Someone did this research for the US: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6380193/McFarthest-point-in-the-US-from-a-McDonalds.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6380...
adventured 9y ago
> I am utterly shocked they have not moved into Africa yet. Africa's (generalizing) median income has just begun to climb high enough in the last 10-15 years, to be financially interesting to the US fast-food companies. Nigeria's GDP in 1999 was... $35 billion, for a population of 119 million people, or roughly $300 per capita. That leaves very little money in the bottom 2/3 for buying fast-food. Today Nigeria's GDP is closer to ~$400 billion for 186 million people (call it $2,000 per capita), a tremendous leap in economic capability. Many other nations in Africa have seen similar results. Consider that Kenya's GDP at a low point in 1993, was just $5 or $6 billion.... It's $70 billion today. Or Ethiopia, from $7.x billion in 2002, to $72 billion today and still climbing rapidly. Most likely these nations become appealing business opportunities for all sorts of foreign companies (whether US or European or Chinese etc), with the rapidly rising disposable incomes.
cdubzzz 9y ago
There was a KFC in Accra back in 2011 or so when I was there, so they are definitely in Ghana, at least.

hellofunk 9y ago

This makes me sad for Brazil. I have heard, though cannot confirm myself, that Japan had one of the healthiest societies in the world until fast food expanded there a couple decades ago, causing many problems common in the States, like obesity and diabetes and blood pressure issues, to significantly increase in frequency there.

adventured 9y ago
It's worth noting that Latin America has plenty of nations that have struggled with obesity due to poor local diets even longer than the US has, including Mexico, Chile, Belize, Brazil and El Salvador. The US obesity problem began in the late 1980s.

Grue3 9y ago

So, Brazil is not a Western country? I guess the entire Europe is The East now. Also, why wouldn't they? It's a big market. Everyone loves fast food even though you'll never see anyone admit it.

distances 9y ago
I'm sure you know this, but "Western country" doesn't strictly refer to a geographical location. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

gcb0 9y ago

they claim that a universal income (bolsa familia) is responsible for poor people buying tons of sugary foods. in reality that universal income allows poor people to not starve. why do they buy crap food? because that's what middle class is also eating. why? because of recently unregulated and rampant advertising.

gcb0 9y ago

title is completely off. its not fast food (Mcdonalds, wendy, etc) but junk food (nestle, kellogs, kraft, etc)

BoppreH 9y ago
The article focuses on junk food, but it's both. Until recently in medium-sized Brazilian cities, the only fast food chains an American would recognize are McDonald's and Subway. This changed since the last two years. In a short span of time I saw new franchises of KFC, Pizza Hut, Domino's and Burger King.
- gcb0 9y ago
  those companies are there for at least 10 years! at least! pizza hut over 15. kfc over 10. bk over 7. ...but well, those companies increasing presence explain why the corrupt coup government rushing to sell the country just passed laws removing low-wage workers protection.

ucaetano 9y ago

I find the title of this link quite funny: Brazil is a western country, even more "west" than Switzerland, where Nestle is from, and with very similar culture to that of Western Europe and the US. Not only that, but Nestle has been in Brazil for almost a century now.

ingenieros 9y ago

I think it's also important to point out that it's not just "western fast food" conglomerates doing all the damage. Frito Lay (Pepsi Co.) had its job cut out for them by local junk food producers so they simply bought them out and stuck their logo on the bag. Bimbo which is a Mexican giant in the processed food industry has been doing exactly the same all across the Andean region. Another very important thing to keep in mind which this article fails to mention is the influence of all the free trade agreements which were signed by countries like Colombia and Perú in recent years. Now it's become more affordable than ever to export "goods" from the U.S into these emerging markets without paying any import duties. That is why you now find supermarkets in emerging nations that bare a strikingly resemblance to their american counterparts. A quick glance through the frozen food section will reveal items that weren't even part of the local diet just a few years ago such as pot pies and tater tots.