Potencial nutricional de plantas alimentícias silvestres de ocorrência na caatinga: uma revisão sistemática

Abstract

Experts and government organizations are increasingly committed to seeking alternatives to current food production methods. However, despite efforts to promote nutritional and environmental policies, research related to the topic still has a restricted approach. Therefore, this systematic review aims to contribute to the establishment of information on the consumption and nutritional potential of wild, native food plants, occurring in the caatinga biome, in human diets. For this, searches were carried out in four databases, namely: Web of Science, Scielo, Scopus and PubMed, using eight sets of keywords in English and Portuguese. The steps were: application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, sorting of articles, treatment and analysis of data and, finally, verification of the food composition of the species. A total of 15 studies were used, in which 78 plants from studies that met the inclusion criteria were cited. Of this total, 22 species presented data on chemical composition, in addition to being cited as food in ethnobotanical studies. From the energy and protein data, the plants with values higher than the average of the set were: Acrocomia aculeata (Jacq.) Lodd. ex Mart., Caryocar coriaceum Wittm., Attalea speciosa Mart. ex Spreng, Hymenaea courbaril L. and Hymenaea stigonocarpa Mart. ex Hayne. Effective incentives are suggested for the economic use of species in order to contribute to conservation, appreciation and a more diverse and healthy diet for man.

Keywords: food supplement; food security; ethnonutrition.