Nutrition Transition, Socioeconomic Differentiation, and Gender Among Adult Xavante Indians, Brazilian Amazon

High prevalence rates of overweight and obesity are increasingly common among indigenous Amazonian societies experiencing greater involvement in market economies. An important factor in such nutritional transition is internal socioeconomic differentiation, which partially accounts for fatness frequencies. We report the results of a diachronic anthropometric comparison and cross-sectional anthropometric and socioeconomic survey of Xavante adults from a single, large community. Our data show an accelerated nutrition transition, with significant weight and BMI increases for males and females between 1962 and 2006. We also found income and wealth to be significantly associated with fatness measures for both sexes combined and for females separately. We interpret the observed gender differences as reflecting differences between male and female social dietary practices. Comparison with other studies in the Amazon region suggests that the relationships between internal socioeconomic differentiation and dietary health vary between cultural and economic settings. We also argue that parallels between Xavante health perspectives and epidemiological interpretations demonstrate the potential for proactive interchange between native and scientific health discourses.