Educação alimentar e nutricional nas infâncias para além de um tema transversal: esboço de uma teoria da prática

Abstract

For nutritionists, Food and Nutritional Education (FNE) constitutes an important formative field of knowledge and practices, being strategic for the promotion of adequate, healthy, and sustainable eating. Childhood is a phase of life involving significant learning and development -sensory-motor, emotional, cognitive, and social -that will influence the formation of children's habits. Based on the interconnection between FNE and childhood, the objective of this essay is to develop a reflective theorizationof our teaching and university extension practices, performed by undergraduate students of Nutrition and children from an application school, both linked to a federal university in northeastern Brazil. For this purpose, we elaborated the principles of our experience performed continuously and permanently since 2018, aiming to highlight issues concerning FNE in the school environment. The results indicate that integration of FNE into the curriculum requires dialoged and participative construction, integrating the school community. FNE cannot simply be reduced to a transversal or cross-cutting theme but must be part of the teaching and learning process.It should be properly referenced as a method and integrated into the curriculum and become significant among the educational subjects. The principles of our practices also pose challenges: FNE needs to be clearly situated with its agents/promoters; the teaching-learning process is driven by the awakening of passions in those involved; playfulness which guides educational actions; and the centrality of the individual, in this case, children in their childhood, sociocultural context, and learning process. Itis hoped that our reflections contribute both to the principles that sustain FNE when focused on childhood, and to the field of Nutrition