As Global Obesity Rises, Teasing Apart Its Causes Grows Harder
Asking overweight strangers about their health and eating habits is always going to be tricky for a reporter, but in some contexts it’s easier than others — say, at a program for overweight children, or an obesity clinic, two places that Andrew Jacobs, a reporter with The New York Times’s health desk, visited to report an article about Brazil’s growing obesity rates..
But broaching the subject with Celene Gomes da Silva, who sells Nestlé products door-to-door in poor neighborhoods of Fortaleza and is featured in the article, was a little different; with his translator and researcher, Paula Moura, Mr. Jacobs started by asking about her job. “It felt a little uncomfortable in the beginning,” he said. Then she broke the ice for him. “She kind of acknowledged, ‘Yeah, I’m fat.’ And she kind of laughed about it,” he recalled.