Nutricionistas do PNAE-CE: atuação no contexto das determinações legais e das predisposições decorrentes da formação profissional

Abstract

Study on nutritionists working on the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) in the state of Ceará. The objective was to investigate their performance, between 2018 and 2022, in the metropolitan regions of Fortaleza, Baturité, Cariri-Centro Sul, Sertão Central, Litoral Leste-Jaguaribe, Sobral-Ibiapaba, Litoral Oeste-Vale do Curú and Sertão do Inhamuns, considering the context of the legal determinations of the exercise of the profession and the predispositions resulting from professional training. It considers social and historical aspects related to the constitution and establishment of the field of knowledge in Nutrition. The appropriation of Bourdieu's (1983) notion of habitus and field emerges from the empirical need to apprehend relationships between the behavior of nutritionists working in the National School Feeding Program - PNAE in Ceará and social structures and conditioning. It discusses concepts about nutrition, food and nourishment, food culture, food and nutritional security, curriculum concepts and aspects inherent to the initial and continuing professional training of nutritionists, public policies, Food and Nutrition Education and its principles, Food and Nutrition Security, the Food and Nutrition Education Reference Framework and the Food Guide for the Brazilian Population, considering the need to appropriate concepts and categories implied in the PNAE. This is a qualitative-quantitative, bibliographic, documentary and field research, with an exploratory and empirical objective. The data collection instruments were: structured interviews with previously formulated questions and questionnaires with open and closed questions; it used foundations of oral history (Thompson, 1988); documentary analysis method (Cellard, 2012); and Depth Hermeneutics (DH) developed by Jhon B. Thompson (1990). Despite its strategic importance in promoting food and nutritional security for millions of Brazilian students, the PNAE still facing significant structural and operational obstacles to its full implementation in the municipalities analyzed in all planning macro-regions of the state of Ceará. Evidence points to the need for greater monitoring, continued training of professionals involved, improvement of working conditions and strengthening of the role of nutritionists as technical professionals, aiming at guaranteeing the human right to adequate food and the effectiveness of the PNAE as a public policy for food and nutritional security.