Black knowledge in health and nutrition

Abstract

Food and health are basic principles of human life. In the development of the field of health and food studies in Brazil, however, there is still little room for the dissemination of research that addresses, from a perspective of critical and Afro-diasporic analysis, the complexity of our reality, the plurality of our ‘foodways and drinkways,’ and our traditional health care practices. Instead, in the extensive literature referencing this debate, the relations of power, violence, and scarcity—structuring elements in the composition of dietary habits and health status— are superficially mentioned, rendering invisible centuries-old resistances of food culture and countercolonial health promotion. Rigid perspectives in the narrative of a ‘harmonious’ racial triad among white, Black, and Indigenous people as a pillar of a ‘balanced’ foundation in Brazilian formation are rarely contested, and routinely tend to reify the myth of the three races—and, consequently, the ideology of racial democracy—to address the experiences and contributions of the Black population in the field of food and health. In this context, this dossier is an invitation to reflection and creates space to welcome works that hold a critical look at food and health in their most diverse areas, as a way to contribute to the structuring and strengthening of studies that establish Black epistemologies as references.