A educação alimentar e nutricional no ensino fundamental à luz dos referenciais curriculares da região nordeste do Brasil

Abstract

Although eating is a process that has accompanied humanity since its emergence, research data on the Brazilian population indicate that their eating habits have been insufficient and/or unsatisfactory. This is due both to economic constraints on food acquisition and to the predominant consumption of processed and ultra-processed foods among those who have access to food. Faced with this duality, educational spaces emerge as promising environments for the formation of critical and reflective individuals, especially because they enable interventions in cases of hunger, as well as the appreciation of food in sociocultural, affective and environmental contexts, among others. Although the subtheme of Food and Nutritional Education (EAN) has been incorporated transversally into the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC), a national normative guiding document for the construction of the curricular matrices of basic education in municipalities and states of Brazil, its approach is still constrained by the biomedical limitations historically adopted in school settings. Given this context, it is expected that the state curriculum guidelines, developed based on the specificities of each state, can broaden the scope of the basic document. With this in mind, this study aims to investigate the approaches to EAN in the curriculum guidelines of the states of the Northeast region of Brazil. This region was selected for having the largest number of Brazilian states. The research, with a qualitative approach and descriptive nature, was conducted in three stages focused on documentary analysis: 1. analysis of the structures of the curricular organizing frameworks of subjects of each discipline; 2. identification of EAN approaches; 3. verification of interdisciplinary intentions. It was observed that the curriculum guidelines of the Northeast had extensions of proposals, compared to the BNCC, in skills or theoretical and methodological specifications of the knowledge objects. Regarding subject approaches, it was noted EAN specifications in each discipline, with particular emphasis on geography, which included the largest number of skills, and on the state of Alagoas, which incorporated EAN throughout all nine years of elementary school. In the two disciplines with the largest workload, Portuguese and mathematics, the predominant focus was on the textual genre of recipe. On the other hand, in some states, the absence of the topic was also observed in some disciplines, such as art and English, while others were not modified by the BNCC proposals, as seen in the area of religious education. Furthermore, interdisciplinary intentions were particularly evident in the state of Ceará, which produced specific columns for this purpose, relating knowledge between the disciplines themselves and others. In this way, it was observed that the states of the Northeast have developed documents that engage with their local contexts, often referencing regional specificities relevant to the teaching of EAN. However, greater alignment between disciplines and areas of knowledge is still needed in order to ensure a more integrated and effective approach to the topics essential for student education.