Guia alimentar para a população brasileira e seus 10 anos sob a perspectiva do jornalismo online brasileiro

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the ten-year trajectory of the current version of the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population (GAPB), published in 2014 by the Ministry of Health, from the perspective of narratives constructed by Brazilian online journalism. The DGBP represented a paradigm shift by moving the focus from isolated nutrients to the social, cultural, and sustainability dimensions of the act of eating. By retracing the path taken since the Guidelines' creation and examining how they were presented by national news websites, the primary objective is to understand the historical-cultural relationship of the publication with Brazilian society and collective health throughout its existence, based on journalistic narratives. The specific objectives are: 1) to conduct a landscape analysis of communication, health, and the conception of the GAPB; 2) to establish the corpus used as a sample of how the Guidelines were presented by Brazilian news websites, considering both traditional and independent journalism; 3) to understand the types of news published and their impact on the population; and 4) to reconstruct the history of the Guidelines from the perspective of Brazilian digital journalism. The theoretical framework is based on authors such as Bueno (2009), Melo (2014), Lima (2013), Jenkins (2009), Minayo (2023), Berger (2008), Sodré (1999), and Baird (2016). Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative approach based on the combination of Ginzburg’s Evidential Paradigm (1989), Courtine’s contributions (2013), and Becker’s Mosaic (1993) to construct the historical-cultural relations with the population and public health, alongside biography writing techniques presented by Neto (2022). The corpus of analysis consists of 132 articles published between October 2014 and August 2025 on the websites Folha de S.Paulo and O Joio e o Trigo, representing, respectively, traditional and independent journalism. The analysis revealed that, although the Guidelines are a global scientific reference, their dissemination to the population is mediated by the outlets' editorial lines. The results indicate that Folha de S.Paulo uses the GAPB predominantly as a source of technical authority to validate individual health recommendations, while O Joio e o Trigo adopts a stance of political advocacy and denunciation, using the Guidelines to expose conflicts of interest within the food industry and agribusiness. It is concluded that journalism played a fundamental role in maintaining the Guidelines' relevance in the absence of continuous institutional campaigns, although challenges persist in democratizing this information to improve public health indices in Brazil.