Análise do estado nutricional e da situação de insegurança alimentar e nutricional de famílias residentes em município do semiárido paraibano.

Abstract

Brazil faces problems of food insecurity, the Brazilian Government invested in food and nutritional safety policies with emphasis on income transfer programs, which aim at ensuring the Human Right to Proper Eating for most vulnerable families and contributing to the eradication of extreme poverty. Taking into account the importance of public policies of income transfer and eating and nutritional security in Brazil, the exposure of low-income families in situation of eating insecurity and most recently the increase in overweight and obesity also observed between families that benefit from Family Allowance (government program) , the study aimed to analyze the nutritional status of individuals, and the proportion of food insecurity according to family income ranges and access to the Family Allowance Program in a municipality of Paraiba’s semi-arid zone. We conducted a population-based cross-sectional study, which produced a sample composed of 327 households surveyed, with a questionnaire covering general information about residents of the households; socioeconomic conditions; indicators of basic needs; indicators of food insecurity; food consumption of the interviewee; participation in social programs and data on the nutritional status. To analyse the sample was divided into three groups of families according to income and access to the Family Allowance Program, namely: Group 1: families with income above the poverty line established by the Family Allowance Program; Group 2: families that participate the Family Allowance Program and Group 3: families that also participate the program but with income below the poverty line set by the program. The low education and low income were prevalent in all families. But there is a higher prevalence of these in rural areas, where most of the vulnerable families reside. The situation of food insecurity was more prevalent among those families belonging to a lower social strata. Obesity was highest among families that receive allowance 11 and absent among those that do not, but have an income below the poverty line set by the program. Participation in the Family Allowance Program guarantees to those families greater access to income and, consequently, to food, contributing to a satisfactory reduction of extreme poverty, but even so, it does not help those families be classified above the poverty line established by the program.