Eating greens

摘要

People who live in Sao Paulo say their restaurants are the equivalent of Rio de Janeiro's beaches: the main sites of recreation and refuge from the teeming city. These days they are emptier than usual. When they eat at home, paulistanos are switching from beef to chicken and vegetables, which are cheaper. This change in dietary habits is caused by the gloom that has enveloped Brazil for much of the past year. A recession is looming (see chart 1). The economy shrank by 0.2% in the first three months of 2015, and by 1.6% between that period and the same quarter a year before. Employment and real incomes are contracting (see chart 2); interest rates and inflation are rising. The country feels leaderless: the president, Dilma Rousseff, has been weakened by a mammoth scandal at Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company, as well as by the economy's dismal performance.