Does sedentarism kill? Study on comments by readers of a Brazilian online newspaper

Abstract

The authors analyzed 46 readers’ comments on a short article named “Does sedentarism kill?”, published in the online version of a Brazilian newspaper. Their analysis considers the complexities of the debates on sedentarism taking place in the collective health fora. The comments were grouped according to categories based on Giddens’ work (1991), Greimas’s isotopic reading (1987), and were eventually analyzed under a semiotic perspective. The diversity of opinions on the causality between sedentarism and mortality demonstrates how complex human life is and thus how difficult it is to design health-related prevention action and policies. Therefore, beyond individualistic and moralizing measures against risky lifestyles, the reduction of social inequalities should be the health ethical imperative and basic premise underlying policies and public action.