Percepção e compreensão dos conceitos contidos na Escala Brasileira de Insegurança Alimentar, em comunidades indígenas no estado do Amazonas, Brasil

["Measuring hunger": psychometric scales of food insecurity and indigenous peoples in Brazil]

The Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale (EBIA) was validated for the Brazilian context in 2004. Since then, the scale has evaluated and measured the experience of food insecurity in rural and urban households, initially in the Brazilian National Household Sample Survey and later in the Brazilian National Survey of Demographic and Health. However, indigenous peoples have not been examined specifically in these surveys, despite recognition of their food and nutritional vulnerability. In this scenario, we analyze and discuss the application of the EBIA among indigenous peoples in Brazil, based on a set of fundamental questions for understanding and measuring their experience with food insecurity and "hunger". We conduct a sociopolitical and ethnographic analysis of a set of official documents and significant articles on the use of psychometric scales of food insecurity among Brazilian indigenous peoples, compared to international studies on the validation and application of scales in other sociocultural contexts. The initiatives with adaptation and application of the EBIA to indigenous peoples in Brazil indicate that understanding and measuring food insecurity in these peoples poses a major challenge. Particularly complex is the proposal to guarantee comparability of different contexts while taking into account the multiple local singularities. We propose that ethnographic studies should serve as specific components of future initiatives on this topic and that they should cover aspects such as the seasonality of indigenous peoples' food production, different processes of food monetization, and the dynamics of their food systems.

Overweight in Goiás'quilombola students and food insecurity in their families

Objective: To characterize the nutritional status of quilombola students and determine the food security status of their households. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with students aged six to nineteen years from quilombola communities in twelve municipalities of Goiás categorized by age, gender, school location (urban/rural), and nutritional status based on the World Health Organization's height-for-age and body mass index for-age charts. The Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale was used for measuring food (in)security in their families. Descriptive and association analyses were conducted using the Chi-square test at a significance level of 5% (p<0.05). Results: In a sample of 226 students, overweight (17.2%) was more common than malnutrition (1.3%), especially in students attending urban schools (28.2%) (p<0.05). Most (75.2%) quilombola families experienced food insecurity, especially mild. Conclusion: The apparent contradiction of excess weight and food insecurity occurring simultaneously indicates the need of revising the study instruments and the causal network that identify poverty.