Today's food and the yesterday’s food in quilombola communities in the Amazon region of Pará state

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the relationship between the today's food and the yesterday’s food, considering gender and generation in the context of food insecurity in three quilombola communities in the Amazon region of Pará state, in Brazil: Tipitinga, Jacarequara and Pimenteira. A literature and secondary data review was conducted, and primary data were collected through 15 open-ended interviews with quilombolas and community mediators. Three workshops were held in each quilombo, involving 42 participants. The main conclusions show that there has been a reduction in areas for extractivism and depletion of soil for farming, in parallel with the aging of the population and the outflow of youth to study and work. The greater availability of financial resources has enabled the purchase of industrialized products and has influenced the greater distance between yesterday's food and today's food based on the criteria of quickness, easiness, taste and lifestyle, shaping social situations that indicate a nutrition transition process.

Keywords:
traditional food; food inequality; quilombos; nutrition transition