Texto 63 - 1ª Fase - FIS / POR / ING/ MAT / QUI - ITA 2019

As questões de 25 a 29 referem-se ao texto a seguir:

Texto 1

1 [...] A picture of Brighton beach in 1976, featured in The Guardian
2 a few weeks ago, appeared to show an alien race. Almost everyone
3 was slim. I mentioned it on social media, then went on holiday. When I
4 returned, I found that people were still debating it. The heated discussion
5 prompted me to read more. How have we grown so fat, so fast? To my
6 astonishment, almost every explanation proposed in the thread turned
7 out to be untrue. [...] The obvious explanation, many on social media
8 insisted, is that we're eating more. [...]
9 So here's the first big surprise: we ate more in 1976. According
10 to government figures, we currently consume an average of
11 2,130 kilocalories a day, a figure that appears to include sweets and
12 alcohol. But in 1976, we consumed 2,280 kcal excluding alcohol and
13 sweets, or 2,590 kcal when they're included. I have found no reason to
14 disbelieve the figures. [...]
15 So what has happened? The light begins to dawn when you look
16 at the nutrition figures in more detail. Yes, we ate more in 1976, but
17 differently. Today, we buy half as much fresh milk per person, but five
18 times more yoghurt, three times more ice cream and - wait for it -
19 39 times as many dairy desserts. We buy half as many eggs as in 1976,
20 but a third more breakfast cereals and twice the cereal snacks: half the
21 total potatoes, but three times the crisps. While our direct purchases
22 of sugar have sharply declined, the sugar we consume in drinks and
23 confectionery is likely to have rocketed (there are purchase numbers
24 from 1992, at which point they were rising rapidly. Perhaps, as we
25 consumed just 9kcal a day in the form of drinks in 1976, no thought
26 the numbers were worth collecting.) In other words, the opportunities
27 to load our food with sugar have boomed. As some experts have long
28 proposed, this seems to be the issue.
29 The shift has not happened by accident. As Jacques Peretti argued
30 in his film The Men Who Made Us Fat, food companies have invested
31 heavily in designing products that use sugar to bypass our natural
32 appetite control mechanisms, and in packaging and promoting these
33 products to break down what remains of our defenses, including through
34 the use of subliminal scents. They employ an army of food scientists
35 and psychologists to trick us into eating more than we need, while their
36 advertisers use the latest findings in neuroscience to overcome our
37 resistance.
38 They hire biddable scientists and thinktanks to confuse us about
39 the causes of obesity. Above all, just as the tobacco companies did with
40 smoking, they promote the idea that weight is a question of "personal
41 responsibility". After spending billions on overriding our willpower, they
42 blame us for failing to exercise it.
43 To judge by the debate the 1976 photograph triggered, it works.
44 "There are no excuses. Take responsibility for your own lives, people!"
45 "No one force feeds you junk food, it's personal choice. We're not
46 lemmings." "Sometimes I think having free healthcare is a mistake. It's
47 everyone's right to be lazy and fat because there is a sense of entitlement
48 about getting fixed." The thrill of disapproval chimes disastrously with
49 industry propaganda. We delight in blaming the victims.
50 More alarmingly, according to a paper in the Lancet, more than
51 90% of policymakers believe that "personal motivation" is "a strong or
52 very strong influence on the rise of obesity". Such people propose no
53 mechanism by which the 61% of English people who are overweight or
54 obese have lost their willpower. But this improbable explanation seems
55 immune to evidence.
56 Perhaps this is because obesophobia is often a fatly-disguised
57 form of snobbery. In most rich nations, obesity rates are much higher
58 at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. They correlate strongly with
59 inequality, which helps to explain why the UK's incidence is greater
60 than in most European and OECD nations. The scientific literature
61 shows how the lower spending power, stress, anxiety and depression
62 associated with low social status makes people more vulnerable to bad
63 diets.
64 Just as jobless people are blamed for structural unemployment, and
65 indebted people are blamed for impossible housing costs, fat people are
66 blamed for a societal problem. But yes, willpower needs to be exercised
67 - by governments. Yes, we need personal responsibility - on the part
68 of policymakers. And yes, control needs to be exerted - over those who have discovered our weaknesses and ruthlessly exploit them.

Adaptado de: <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/15/age-of-obesity-shaming-overweightpeople/>. Acesso em: ago. 2018.