Nutrition Transition, Socioeconomic Differentiation, and Gender Among Adult Xavante Indians, Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

High prevalence rates of overweight and obesity are increasingly common among indigenous Amazonian societies experiencing greater involvement in market economies. An important factor in such nutritional transition is internal socioeconomic differentiation, which partially accounts for fatness frequencies. We report the results of a diachronic anthropometric comparison and crosssectional anthropometric and socioeconomic survey of Xavante adults from a single, large community. Our data show an accelerated nutrition transition, with significant weight and BMI increases for males and females between 1962 and 2006. We also found income and wealth to be significantly associated with fatness measures for both sexes combined and for females separately. We interpret the observed gender differences as reflecting differences between male and female social dietary practices. Comparison with other studies in the Amazon region suggests that the relationships between internal socioeconomic differentiation and dietary health vary between cultural and economic settings. We also argue that parallels between Xavante health perspectives and epidemiological interpretations demonstrate the potential for proactive interchange between native and scientific health discourses.

Hipertensión arterial y obesidad en indígenas asháninkas de la región Junín, Perú

“…(15) y 23% (16) . Se ha reportado que los valores culturales, como el de intercambio de alimentos entre parientes y en la comunidad, podrían tener un efecto mitigador en la evolución hacia la obesidad entre pobladores indígenas que han sido expuestos a significativos cambios socioeconómicos (16) .…”

“…Se ha reportado que los valores culturales, como el de intercambio de alimentos entre parientes y en la comunidad, podrían tener un efecto mitigador en la evolución hacia la obesidad entre pobladores indígenas que han sido expuestos a significativos cambios socioeconómicos (16) . En los asháninkas, sería importante investigar la contribución de las características culturales, incluyendo las redes sociales de intercambio de alimentos, la dieta y la actividad física en el desarrollo o mitigación de enfermedades crónicas como obesidad e hipertensión.…”

Contributions to a historical review of biological anthropology in Brazil from the second half of the twentieth century

“…This persistence arose from the fact that in the 1950s and 60s the category became adopted in the public sphere more widely, including by all kinds of political agents, and featured in numerous scientific studies in areas like health or genetics itself (Santos, 1996;Little;Sussman, 2010), without mentioning evolutionary psychology. Sometimes, 'race' was mobilized in close connection with terms like population, in biological anthropology, or ethnic group, in sociocultural anthropology (Véran, 2012), as evinced in more recent works like those of Santos et al (2009), Gaspar Neto and Santos (2011) and Wade et al (2014).…”

Epidemiology of high blood pressure among the Kaingang people on the Xapecó Indigenous Land in Santa Catarina State, Brazil, 2013

“…The currently available data have not allowed identifying an equivalent trend for Brazil's indigenous peoples as a whole. Even so, while precarious sanitation and difficult access to healthcare services contribute to the prevalence of infectious and parasitic diseases, studies have also pointed to increasingly high rates of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) among some Brazilian indigenous peoples 4,5 .…”

“…However, some studies have found an increase in blood pressure levels since contact between indigenous peoples and the non-indigenous population 4,5,9 . In addition, NCDs have increased more rapidly among indigenous peoples when compared to the Brazilian population as a whole 4,5,9,10,11 .…”