Questão 824a767b-e5
Prova:UECE 2017
Disciplina:Inglês
Assunto:Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension

According to the text, the huge change in the way food is produced and distributed worldwide is one of the reasons for the

                                           T E X T


      As growth slows in wealthy countries, Western food companies are aggressively expanding in developing nations, contributing to obesity and health problems.

      FORTALEZA, Brazil — Children’s squeals rang through the muggy morning air as a woman pushed a gleaming white cart along pitted, trash-strewn streets. She was making deliveries to some of the poorest households in this seaside city, bringing pudding, cookies and other packaged foods to the customers on her sales route.

      Celene da Silva, 29, is one of thousands of door-to-door vendors for Nestlé, helping the world’s largest packaged food conglomerate expand its reach into a quarter-million households in Brazil’s farthestflung corners.

      As she dropped off variety packs of Chandelle pudding, Kit-Kats and Mucilon infant cereal, there was something striking about her customers: Many were visibly overweight, even small children.

      She gestured to a home along her route and shook her head, recalling how its patriarch, a morbidly obese man, died the previous week. “He ate a piece of cake and died in his sleep,” she said.

      Mrs. da Silva, who herself weighs more than 200 pounds, recently discovered that she had high blood pressure, a condition she acknowledges is probably tied to her weakness for fried chicken and the Coca-Cola she drinks with every meal, breakfast included.

      Nestlé’s direct-sales army in Brazil is part of a broader transformation of the food system that is delivering Western-style processed food and sugary drinks to the most isolated pockets of Latin America, Africa and Asia. As their growth slows in the wealthiest countries, multinational food companies like Nestlé, PepsiCo and General Mills have been aggressively expanding their presence in developing nations, unleashing a marketing juggernaut that is upending traditional diets from Brazil to Ghana to India.

      A New York Times examination of corporate records, epidemiological studies and government reports — as well as interviews with scores of nutritionists and health experts around the world — reveals a sea change in the way food is produced, distributed and advertised across much of the globe. The shift, many public health experts say, is contributing to a new epidemic of diabetes and heart disease, chronic illnesses that are fed by soaring rates of obesity in places that struggled with hunger and malnutrition just a generation ago.

      The new reality is captured by a single, stark fact: Across the world, more people are now obese than underweight. At the same time, scientists say, the growing availability of high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods is generating a new type of malnutrition, one in which a growing number of people are both overweight and undernourished.

      “The prevailing story is that this is the best of all possible worlds — cheap food, widely available. If you don’t think about it too hard, it makes sense,” said Anthony Winson, who studies the political economics of nutrition at the University of Guelph in Ontario. A closer look, however, reveals a much different story, he said. “To put it in stark terms: The diet is killing us.”

      Even critics of processed food acknowledge that there are multiple factors in the rise of obesity, including genetics, urbanization, growing incomes and more sedentary lives. Nestlé executives say their products have helped alleviate hunger, provided crucial nutrients, and that the company has squeezed salt, fat and sugar from thousands of items to make them healthier. But Sean Westcott, head of food research and development at Nestlé, conceded obesity has been an unexpected side effect of making inexpensive processed food more widely available.

      “We didn’t expect what the impact would be,” he said.

      Part of the problem, he added, is a natural tendency for people to overeat as they can afford more food. Nestlé, he said, strives to educate consumers about proper portion size and to make and market foods that balance “pleasure and nutrition.”

      There are now more than 700 million obese people worldwide, 108 million of them children, according to research published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine. The prevalence of obesity has doubled in 73 countries since 1980, contributing to four million premature deaths, the study found. 

                                                                               By ANDREW JACOBS and MATT RICHTEL

                                                  The New York Times SEPT. 16, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com

A
thousands of premature deaths in India.
B
use of crucial nutrients in popular foods.
C
healthy diet in isolated pockets in Africa.
D
increase of chronic diseases, like diabetes.

Gabarito comentado

Silvana FariaMestre em Educação pela Universidade Federal de Lavras (UFLA) e Professora de Inglês

De acordo com o texto, a enorme mudança na forma como os alimentos são produzidos e distribuídos em todo o mundo é uma das razões para 
A) milhares de mortes prematuras na Índia.
B) uso de nutrientes cruciais em alimentos populares.
C) dieta saudável em pacotes isolados na África.
D) aumento de doenças crônicas, como diabetes.
L. 1 -2 As growth slows in wealthy countries, Western food companies are aggressively expanding in developing nations, contributing to obesity and health problems. 
L. 23 -25 - The shift, many public health experts say, is contributing to a new epidemic of diabetes and heart disease, chronic illnesses that are fed by soaring rates of obesity [...]
Tradução: À medida que o crescimento diminui nos países ricos, as empresas ocidentais de alimentos  estão se expandindo agressivamente nos países em desenvolvimento, contribuindo para a obesidade e os problemas de saúde. A mudança, dizem muitos especialistas em saúde pública, está contribuindo para uma nova epidemia de diabetes e doenças cardíacas, doenças crônicas que são alimentadas por altas taxas de obesidade [...]

De acordo com os excertos traduzidos, a enorme mudança na forma como os alimentos são produzidos e distribuídos em todo o mundo é uma das razões para o aumento de doenças crônicas, como diabetes.
Gabarito do Professor: D

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