Infant feeding: global and local policies for prevention and health promotion. Prescriptions, environments and inequalities

Abstract

The consideration of childhood obesity as a global epidemic mobilized different government levels to develop strategies to intervene collectively in diagnosing, treating and preventing these health problems. The aim of this paper is to analyze from a qualitative perspective the policies related to infant feeding in their global and local guidelines for the promotion of a healthy diet and the prevention of obesity. Numerous policies aim to change individual behaviors by encouraging the control of bodies through self-surveillance measures (own and that of the children), thus legitimizing the dominant social order. The focus in health and nutrition exclusively on individual responsibility makes social relations invisible, generating “strategic ignorance”. Policies that seek to regulate environments -for example, food labeling- allow the focus to be placed on industrial food processing. As a conclusion, it is pointed out that the regulatory policies of the environments allow to intervene in the relationships developed between people and their environments within the framework of inequities in communication and health.