Social inequities in food consumption in Brazil: A critical review of the national surveys

Abstract

The scope of this article is to investigate the association between socioeconomic status and food consumption among Brazilians and understand how the results of the major national surveys contribute to the identification of possible social and ecological inequities in food consumption. A systematic review of studies conducted a search for publications that analyzed the relationship between socioeconomic position and food consumption in major national surveys. The definition of socioeconomic position, the selection of its indicator variables and the critical analysis of its operationalization were based on ecosocial epidemiology. Individuals with lower socioeconomic status (skin color/brown or black-skinned, less education and income, and being resident in rural areas) are less likely to have a diversified and healthy diet. The effects of gender and marital status can only be understood by social profiling. Socioeconomic position variables create a complex web of causality that helps to explain the reasons that determine the food consumption of Brazilians and reveal social inequities in diet and nutrition. Greater conceptual clarity regarding the measurement of socioeconomic parameters is required to achieve greater precision regarding the causes of social inequalities in food.