Determinações da obesidade na pobreza: regência da acumulação do capital

Abstract

It is a common thing to have either obesity associated to abundance of food or poverty to shortage of resources. This apparent paradox between obesity and poverty has no support within the Brazilian social reality in that surveys show a remarkable increase in the incidence of overweight and obesity among the social and economiccaly poorest populations. The present work has as its object of study the relation between the phenomenon of obesity in poverty and the contemporary interests of capital, and as its general aim to analyze the social and economical indicators of obesity in poverty in the context of the logic of accumulation of capital. The methodology of the work grounded research on bibliography, documentary, and outcomes of secondary studies in the field. The research on bibliography data masters this investigation as it enables the identification of contemporary authors so that providing the necessary theoretical grounds in order to clarify the constitutive traits of the object. The documentary research is based on recommendations, policies and programs of the Brazilian government related to obesity, as well as on the documents on actions proposed by the World Health Organization on Food Security and agricultural agreements. Although the approach of the theme relied on the considerations of authors who address obesity in a plural view, broader theoretical material on a theoretical-critical view were searched to the analysis of the object of this work. Initially, a study on the relevance of obesity as a social problem was held, which resulted on the understanding of the factors beyond the physical and individual body weight, going either beyond the health-disease relation and its genetic-emotional aspects, in order to clearly understand the historical, cultural, social and political issues related to obesity as a result of the transformations coming from the accumulation of capital process. To specify the category poverty, studies on Marx were held on the problem of poverty-strickeness, which is deeply associated with the forms of relative superpopulation or industrial army of reserve. Next, tendencies of the food production in the contemporary capitalism were identified, considering the relation between the poor quality nutrition of food and the logic of the capitalist profit, as well as the influence of world agreements on the production of food. In this way, the results of this research allows us to realize that obesity in poverty-strickened populations is an increasing social problem under the regency of the capital and on behalf of its profitable interests present on the definition and distribution of the production of food worldwide.