This column was written for the #scienceinelections campaign, which celebrates Science Month. In July, columnists give up their space to reflect on the role of science in the reconstruction of Brazil. The writer is Patrícia Constante Jaime, vice-coordinator of the Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health at the University of São Paulo (Nupens/USP) and vice-director of the Faculty of Public Health at USP
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The news that 33 million people are hungry in Brazil, widely publicized in June, is shocking. If Cazuza were alive, however, he would see, once again, a museum of great news.
Until the 2000s, the country registered significant rates of child malnutrition – at the time, one of the main indicators for measuring hunger. We figured on the UN’s Hunger Map, alongside nations with much less resources, and which did not call themselves “the world’s breadbasket”. A few years later, the tables began to turn and, in 2014, Brazil celebrated the near eradication of hunger.
How was this possible? There is only one recipe: a soup of public policies for food and nutrition security. The basis for this soup was the creation of an effective income transfer program, giving the population the power to purchase food directly.
Other ingredients were added to this base – such as reinforcements to the National School Feeding Program (and its links with family farming) or the publication of food guides – to boost the improvement in the pattern of food consumption and promote the health of the population.
All these initiatives were guided by science, which was the salt in this soup – an essential ingredient, which gives the recipe meaning, but which we rarely get to see. Nutrition and nutritional epidemiology contributed in several stages: their data made it possible to diagnose the situation in Brazil, create and test different interventions, choose solutions, monitor and evaluate them.
Science has also shown that, since 2016, food insecurity has reappeared, culminating in the hunger we see today. It is the unacceptable result of dismantling such as the cut in the budget of strategic actions, such as the Food Acquisition Program and the Cistern Program, and the extinction of the National Council for Food and Nutritional Security (Consea) – a body that was directly linked to the Presidency. of the Republic and had broad participation of civil society for the formulation of public policies. With low quality ingredients, or even absent, the soup was thin.
Only the reconstruction of public policies on food and nutrition is able to thicken the soup again – and, in this context, science plays a crucial role.
Of course, monitoring of food insecurity continues, whether it is mild (when there is a loss in the quality of food), moderate (when there is insufficient food), or severe (hunger itself). But Brazil now has new challenges. We are experiencing the coexistence of malnutrition and obesity, an increasingly significant supply of ultra-processed foods, food environments that are increasingly less health-promoting and a food system with heavy environmental and social impacts. The list is long, and the science is ready. After all, as Betinho used to say, those who are hungry are in a hurry.
