O COMER CONSCIENTE: PERSPECTIVAS PARA A EDUCAÇÃO ALIMENTAR NA INFÂNCIA.

Abstract

“Are you what you eat?” Is there any question about the way we satisfy our hunger? Or about how do we choose what we are going to eat? And these choices? Are they conscious choices? Individual choices? Group choices? What were the main factors that influenced them? The subject food, as looking through the gastronomic aspect as through the healthy aspect progressively wins the headline in the midia. However, these subjects feeding and consunption, are also starting to appear in the academic works. It is like, on this new era, man has rediscovered his own body. Possibily he could verify that his postmodern condition of a passive observer brings him a non-ideal body format. This research investigates the formation of healthy habits for life, more specifically, the efficiency of Feeding Education on infant and teenager population from a public school in Ponta Grossa city, Parana State. For this, the theorical reference is the Science Teaching Lettering Process. This study had its focus on the project “Lanche Saudável” [“Healthy Lunch”], developed in this school, since march, 2005. At first, it was a mapping of the representations of “healthy food” on this population, since it is a requisition to obtain a perfect body, and, in addition, it has two key-factors: the growing trend of lipofobia, and the end of ritualistic eating process. Subsequently some interviews with the teachers were done, about the Science curricula, besides a mapping of infant obesity. Finnaly, an investigation on Scholar Feeding Department of the Municipal Education Bureau was done in order to clarify the conditions of the food offered to children currently. The methodology adopted for this work was the action-research, but the final analysis followed the theory of Phenomenology.The results of the research point to the conclusion that, even people have the knowlodge about the terms “healthy feeding habit” and its close relation to “healthy body” and “infant obesity”, feeding education is not totally efficient yet because it cannot count on consciousness in the learnig process for the new habits formation. Another conclusion is that the knowlogde builting process is related with the joy on learning, and the absense of it may avoid the end of the process. The main cientific theory that guides this work is the Jean Piaget’s “Consciousness Taking Theory”.The study also revels that the public policies as in the curricula planning programs, as in the schollar feeding programs need to be reviewed. Finally it was observed that Science Education, while the subject responsable for “Healthy Promotion” on the curricula, leaves a gap on the students’ formation, about the body and healthy care, essential matters for the objective conclusion of the Lettering Process that is “education for life”.