Formas e Sabores: Representações do corpo e da comida em jovens do Baixo Alentejo

Abstract

The body and food are subjects covered by several areas of intervention and are of great importance. This is partly due to their involvement in people’s everyday practices and experience related to healthy behaviours or to illness. In order to find out about the attitude to the body and food in adolescents on the basis of the cognitive and symbolic dimensions associated with them, we interviewed 523 students of both sexes aged between 12 and 19 years from the Beja, district in Portugal. The results indicated that their representations of the body and food varied significantly depending on the young people’s social belonging (gender and age).