2004 Annual Meeting - Abstract

Socioeconomic transformations and dietary change: The emergence of obesity, hypertension and diabetes among native Amazonians

Nancy Flowers
nflowers@hunter.cuny.edu

Until recently, Amazonian subsistence was based on hunting, fishing, gathering wild vegetable foods, and the cultivation of traditional crops, activities that require a high level of physical activity. At present some Amazonian societies struggle to support their growing populations on a land base with inadequate resources. They may also come under pressure to engage in activities like wage labor and cash cropping that tie them to the outside economy. In this situation people tend to reduce varied traditional foods in their diets, replacing them with higher consumption of a single staple carbohydrate crop and/or purchased foods. The result may be increasing rates of adult obesity and hypertension, and the appearance of diabetes as a health problem.

In a comparative study of two Xavánte groups living on different reservations in eastern Mato Grosso, Brazil, my colleagues and I found that there were marked differences in physical parameters and health conditions between the two groups. These differences appear to be largely due to their histories of contact with the larger society.
One of the Xavánte groups we studied, now living in a village called Etéñitépa, remained on the land they occupied before contact. In the early 1960s a biomedical team that made a study of this group was highly impressed by their physical condition. Their reservation is the largest of the six present day Xavánte reservations, and has the lowest population density. Unlike the Etéñitépa group, the Xavánte now living on the Sangradouro reservation found their land increasingly invaded by ranchers, and soon after contact were forced to seek refuge with Salesian missionaries. At present, while their population size is similar to that of the Etéñitépa group, their reservation is about one third the size.

In the late 1970s the Etéñitépa Xavánte became involved, with other Xavánte groups, in a government scheme to grow rice on a large scale using agricultural machinery. When the project failed after a few years the Etéñitépa Xavánte continued to grow rice, but only for subsistence. Comparing time allocation observations of the Etéñitépa Xavante made in 1977, with observations made in 1994, we found that in 1994 the Etéñitépa people were spending less time on agricultural labor, and more time on hunting, fishing and gathering wild vegetable foods than in 1977. They were also eating more wild foods and less rice. A relatively large and undegraded reservation provided resources that allowed them to resist dietary change.

A comparison of time observations made on the two reservations showed that at Etéñitépa people spend more subsistence time on activities requiring physical effort than people at Sangradouro, where 40 percent of subsistence time involves paid work for the mission. Sangradouro people also eat more rice, and more starchy purchased foods. As a result, many adults at Sangradouro are frankly obese. The mean weights of men and women at Sangradouro are respectively 5.1 and 12.6 kg higher than those at Etéñitépa. Cases of diabetes are beginning to appear at Sangradouro and some other Xavante reservations.
Investigators are starting to observe impoverished diets, obesity, and cases of diabetes in other Amazonian communities. The rapidity of these transformations, often in one generation or less, is striking. I compare the economic and ecological transformations that appear to be driving dietary and health changes in Amazonia with those that began to take place among many North American native peoples some forty years ago.