Simões’s discussion of the various different biomes present in the different regions of Brazil was very enlightening. It’s easy to reduce our image of another country to what we see from popular tourist locations. When I think of Brazil, I generally only picture the Amazon and the streets of Rio. Of course, Brazil is so much more than what we see in movies and Facebook albums. It’s actually a gigantic country, the 5th largest by area and by population, so naturally its different regions have drastically different ecosystems.

Another component of the presentation that I found interesting was Simões’s description of Brazilian diets. He mentioned that Brazilians eat a simple breakfast of bread and milk; a hearty lunch with rice beans, meat, and vegetables; and a light dinner with bread, milk, and ham/cheese. This reminds me a lot of my maternal family’s diet, which generally consists of the same, except they eat corn arepas for their bread. It sounds like a healthy, wholesome meal plan, but because of my American upbringing I find South American meals weirdly redundant: After many years of having the food pyramid drilled into my head, I can never be comfortable with a meal consisting of only one carbohydrate and two types of dairy. My European paternal family follows a similar meal structure, with light, bread-based breakfasts and dinners and a heavy lunch, but they rarely eat beans. The amount of sandwiches this diet entails is also a bit strange, but I find it slightly more tolerable because at least there’s a bit more variety in the food groups represented at each meal. I think having the largest meal in the middle of the day does make the most sense health-wise, since you get all that energy when you need it, in the afternoon, but it’s generally too impractical for the strict American 9-5 schedule.