It is one of the pillars of Jair Bolsonaro’s populist struggle to portray himself as a man without the frills of the people: a fist-sized can of condensed milk costing around $ 0.80 a pop.
Since his shocking election in 2018, the president of Brazil has appeared repeatedly showering his breakfast roll with the sugar-laden liquid – especially during a morning meal with Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton.
But the allegations, later partly debunked, that the Bolsonaro government spent 15.6 million reais (£ 2.1 million / $ 2.9 million) last year on its favorite food generated a public outcry, with rivals and detractors detonating what they call the president’s immoderate eating habits.
“Those responsible must be punished!” Lefty Ciro Gomes thundered on Twitter, demanding an investigation of the Supreme Court on “the absurd spending Bolsonaro”.
Sâmia Bomfim, a socialist deputy, said that Brazilians deserved to know how 7,200 cans of condensed milk can be devoured each day. “Did the presidential family consume all this?” she wondered after the reports were published on a news site called Metrópoles.
Pointing to the deadly Covid crisis in the Amazon, deputy Marcelo Freixo claimed that “with the money Bolsonaro spent on condensed milk, 8,000 cylinders of oxygen could have been purchased to prevent Brazilians from suffocating to death”.
Conservative columnist Merval Pereira condemned a “scandal [that] It would be comical if it were not tragic “. In addition to condensed milk, 2.2 million reais would have been spent on chewing gum, 8.9 million on chocolates and 31.5 million on soft drinks, Pereira complained in the newspaper O Globo, denouncing how the spending had caused “indigestion civic ”. “Even though condensed milk has become a ministerial craze, more than two million cans is too much,” said the columnist angrily.
The truth, lost in the midst of online uproar and an explosion of memes and recipes, seemed to reveal far less about Bolsonaro’s taste buds.
The facts check website reported that the figures cited by Metrópoles referred to the total federal government spending, not just the presidency. Most – £ 1.9 million ($ 2.6 million) – of condensed milk was purchased by the defense ministry to feed tens of thousands of people who work with sweets.
Thomas Traumann, a political communications expert, said it is ironic that Bolsonaro, who came to power in a tsunami of fake news and misinformation, is trying his own medicine.
Traumann predicted that the condensed milk mess would not bring Bolsonaro down. But the story was a public relations stunt for a president who was already under pressure because of the collapse of the health system in the Amazon. “They started the year on the defensive on social media, which is the domain they dominate the most,” he said.
In a suggestion of the Bolsonaro family’s malaise, the president told “shitty” journalists covering the story that they should “go fuck themselves”. “Go stick a can of condensed milk in your ass”, Bolsonaro declared.
His son Eduardo published a series of tweets defending condensed milk as “a calorie-rich food” essential to Brazilian cuisine.
Filipe Martins, an aide to the presidency, launched against his boss what he called “a stupid and criminal accusation”. He blamed the “rotten media” for the fuss of dairy products.