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(From National Food and Nutrition Policy, Ministério da Saúde, Brasília/DF – 2003).
Anemia – Reduction of blood hemoglobin levels to below normal estabilished limits for age, sex and physical condition.
Anthropometric deficit – Growth delays in the ratios of weight/age, weight/height and height/age, using as a reference conventionally recommended charts of averages. Can also refer to other indices of body measurements.
Anthropometric evaluation – The use of measurements – mainly height and weight – as a criterion for the evaluation of physical growth and, as an extension, nutritional state.
Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative – Maternity and other hospitals that fulfil the “Ten Steps to Breastfeeding Sucess” endorsed by WHO/Unicef.
Biovailability – The degree of utilization of specifc nutients contained in foods, using as a reference the total content – 100% - of the nutritive factor being considered.
Biological group – See nutritional supervision, supervision of siblings and contacts, and vulnerability. Designates risks induced by biological factors.
Biological utilization of food – Process that involves the continuum digestion / absorption / metabolism / excretion, or partial resynthesis of foods in living organisms. Can be adversely altered by the occurrence of diseases at any one or more of the steps in the process.
Breastfeeding – The series of nutritional, behavioral and physiological processes that result in the child’s ingestion, either directly at the breast or through artificial extraction, of milk produced by the mother herself.
Chemical-nutritional composition tables – Tables that provide information concerning tha contents of foods in terms od proteins, fats, carboydrates, vitamins and minerals significant to human nutrition.
Chronic malnutrition – Deprivational process of long duration, characteristically expressed in insuficient height.
Complementary diet (adequate and appropriate) – Feeding beun as a complement to breastfeeding between 4-6 months of age, providing a diet adequante in quantity and quality (nutrients and calories).
Complementary os transition foods – Those offered to the child between 4-6 months of age as a complementary to mother’s milk, beginning with pureed foods and gradually offering foods of greater consistency until the child can consume tha regular family diet in addition to mother’s milk. Currently, the term “weaning diet” is not used, to avoid giving the idea that introducing solid foods implies the suspension of breastfeeding.
Control of coexisting illnesses – Measures to prevent and cure the occurrence of illnesses that aggravate the nutritionl state.
Cretinism – Mental retardation resulting from the adverse action of iodine deficiency on the maturation of the child’s nervous system.
Diabetes – Process of glucose intolerance, usually resulting in elevation in blood sugar and its eventual appearance in the urine.
Diet – Corresponds generically to individuals’ foods parameters. Specifically, it can represent a recommended combination of foods in determined proportions for therapeutic purposes.
Dietary orientation – recommendations for the choice, preparation, domestic conservation and consumption of foods, by way of criteria which consider their nutritional values and specific indications according to physiological conditions (growth, pregnancy, lactation), pathologies (obesity, diabetes, nutrient deprivation) and, also, their socio-economic justification (nutritive value x cost). See healthy dietary practices.
Dietary traditions – Refers to the slow or rapid changes that occur in the child’s eating patterns as breastfeeding is being substituted by other products in preparation for consumption of the norml family diet. A critical period for nutritional risk.
Dietic products – Drinks or processed foods with characteristics such as low-calorie or reduced fat content, destined to the treatment of particular situation of medical or nutritional interest.
Dislipidemias – Term that refers to alterations, nearly always due t excesses, in the levels of lipids or fats, such as cholesterol an triglycerides, in the blood.
Endemic deprivation – Deprivation illnnesses such as iron-deprivation anemia, energy-protein malnutrition and goiter, that appear with a regular and practically constant frequency, and a prevalence above the “normal” limits of tolerance.
Energy-protein deficiency – Also calles energy-protein malnutrition, this refers to the nutritional state resulting from a deficiency of calories and proteins, occurring most frequently in children.
Epidemiological transition – Changes that occur in the morbidity-mortality profile of a population, describing the pyramid of demographic transition from a youthful population to one that is mature or elderly. The most characteristic epidemiological fact is the passage from tha malnutrition / infection pole to obesity / chronic degenerative disease pole.
Exclusive breastfeeding – The use mother’s milk, usually until six months of age, as the child’s sole source of nourishment, excluding even consumption of water or teas.
Food and nutritional security – Add to the definition of food security the concept that, beyond access to consumption, the organism must possess adequate physiological conditions for the utilization of the food through good digestion, absorption and metabolism of nutrients.
Food and nutritional surveillanca – Consists of the collection and analysis of information concerning the food nutritional situation of individuals and collectives, with the purpose of creating measures to prevent or correct existing or potential problems. An essential requisite for the rational justification of food and nutrition programs. See also growth and development, control of coexisting diseases and specific nutritional treatment.
Food assistance – See food support and food suplementation.
Food chain hazard – Biological, chemical or physical agent, or food property, that can have adverse effects on health.
Food composition – Nutritive value of foods or their content of specific substances such as vitamins, minerals and ohter elements.
Food enrichment – Addition of determined nutrients – vitamins, minerals and others – to foods with ralatively low contents of those nutritive elements.
Foods “in natura” – Products offeres and consumed in their natural state, without suffering industrial alterations that modify their physical-chemical properties (texture, composition, sensorial characteristics). Fruit and fresh milk are good examples of food “in natura”.
Food security – Guarantee that families have regular and permanent ohysycal and economic access to a basic food supply whose quantity and quality are sufficient to meet nutritional needs.
Food quality and safety – In Sanitary Surveillance, concerns those attributes related to safety and nutritional value of food. See also healthy dietari practices.
Food quality guarantee – See food safety, sanitary surveilance of food.
Food safety criteria – Principles and standards to assure that foods have good nutritional value and present no physical, chemical and biological contaminants harmful to consumers.
Food supplementation – Additional quota of foods destined towards prevention or correction of nutritional deficiencies. See food support.
Food support – Personal or institutional donations of one or more types of food for people suffering from, or at risk of, malnutrition. The same as food supplementation or, in some countries, food assistance.
Goiter – Significant enlagement of the thyroid gland, beyond normal limits.
Growth and development – The first term refers to the increase in body measurements, such as height and weight. The second is applied to the appearance and improvement of functions, such as language, motor ability, cognitive functions, psychic maturity and others.
Guardposts – Areas or communities that can be monitored by means of the aplication of a series of nutritional state indicators, providing information which, by analogy, can express the probable situation in similar socio-economic and sanitary contexts.
Healthy dietary habits – See healthy dietary practices, food quality and safety.
Healthy dietary practices – Uses, habits and costums that define parameters of food consumption according to scientific and technical knowledge concerning good nourishment. See dietary orientation, food composition, and nutritional well-being.
Human milk banks – Specialized centers responsible for promoting breastfeeding incentives and for the collection, processing, stocking and quality control of artificially extracted human milk, to later be distributed under a doctor’s or nutritinist’s prescription.
Human Poverty Index – This index is composed of indicators relates to life expectancy, malnutrition in children under five, literacy, and access to health services and potable water.
Idiocy – Physical, motor and mental retardation brought about by grave iodine deficiency during the fetal period and the first months of life.
Insufficient height – Delay in growth in stature, when compared with the normal parameters for sex and age.
Intersectorial character – Aspect which considers the co-responsability of two or more sectors of government in relation to the causes of or solutions to food and nutrition problems.
Iodine-dependent – Said of those functional or morphological disorders, among which are goiter and idiocy, produced by the deficiency of iodine in the water, salts and foods consumed.
Iron deficiency – Organic state of micronutrient deficit that occurs when dietary onsumption of bioavailable iron is low, when blood losses are high or when requirement is increased due to infection or fever or, worse yet, when two or more of these conditions exist simultaneously, diminishing the body’s stores of iron and resulting in the appearance of anemia.
Iron supllementes – Organic or inorganic iron compounds used to treat anemia.
Low birth-weight – Case of live births weighign less 2500 grams.
Malnutrition – Generic term usually employed to distinguish nutritional deficiencies, referring mainly to energy-protein malnutrition. See the corresponding definitions for anthropometric deficit, energy-protein deficit and micronutrient deficiency which are specific cases of malnutrition or deprivation illnesses.
Mcg/dl – Micrograms per decilitres. Menansurement used in laboratory exams.
Megadoses – massive quantities of a medication or micronutrient administrated in a single dose, as in the case of vitamin A.
Micronutrient deficiency – Organic state of lack of nutritive elements, such as vitamin A, iron, iodine and zinc, requised by the body in very small quantities measurable in mg/day.
Micronutrients – Nutrients required by the body in extremely small quantities – milligrams or micrograms – such as iodine, vitamin A, zinc and iron.
Nourishment – Biological and cultural process invloving the choice, preparation and consumption of one or more foods.
Nutrition – Physiological state that results from the consumption and biological utilization of energy andnutrients at the cellular level.
Nutrition-related diseases – Terminology for a great variety of diseases that results from insufficient consumption, excessive consumption or a prolonged imbalance between the ingestion and utilization of nutritive elements that should be harmoniously combined. Various other entries describe specific situations: goiter, malnutrition, nutritional deficiences. See also dislipidemias and obesity.
Nutritional deficiences – Situations in which general or specific deficiencies of energy or nutrients result in the installation of organic processes adverse to health.
Nutritional disorders – Health problems resulting from bad nutrition or, rather, pathological situations of nutritional etiology.
Nutritional labelling – Part of label that describes product’s nutritional contents.
Nutritional surveillance – A part of food and nutritional surveillance, having as its main focus the nutritional state of biological groups (children, pregnant women) and social groups (low-income) most susceptible to nutritional problems. Can also include the other pole (adult men and women with overweight, obesity and related problems).
Nutritional well-being – Organic state in which the functions of consumption and utilization of food energy and nutrients take place in accordance with the biological necessities of the individual.
Obesity – Exaggerated increase in weight in relation to height. The popular term for obese is fat.
Overweight – Excess of weight in an individual based on comparison with charts or standards of normality. Obesity is more elevated degree of overweight.
Pharmaceutical products – The term is used in this document to designate pharmacological preparations in medication from that are based on specific nutrients, such as vitamins, iron, iodine, zinc, etc.
Primary iodine deficiency – Iodine deficiency initially attributed to insufficient ingestion of this micronutrient.
Prophylactic treatment – Treatment performed to prevent diseases or nutritional damages.
Sanitary surveillance of food – Supervises the aplication of standards and conducts that assure necessary food quality. See food safety criteria.
Specific nutritional treatment – Actions recommended by peculiar situations of nutritional risk, such as anemia, goiter, vitamin A deficiency and other conditions.
Stress – Adverse stimuli with different physical, psychic and nutritional impacts. Tension.
Supervision of sibilings and contacts – Careful supervision along with the ecessary treatment (food support or suplementation, growth evaluation, basic healthcare) for sibilings and mothers (considered “contacts”) of children between the ages 6-23 months with malnutrition. Malnutrition in this age group can be indicative of malnourished mothers and sibilings, constituting nutritional risk groups.
Therapeutic property – Property of a specific food or drug – see pharmaceutical products – to perform curatively in correcting deviations or fully characterizes illnesses, as in the case of nutrition-related illnesses.
Therapeutic treatment – Treatments adopted to correct clinical pathological situations. Actions destined toward curing diseases.
Vitamin A deficiency – Low vitamin A availability in hepatic deposits and diminished levels in the blood; may or may not presents signs and symptoms of the deficiency.
Vitamin A precursors – Substances contained in plant foods – carotenes – that convert to vitamin A after being ingested.
Vulnerability – Deals with the biological, occupational or social factors that increase the risks of nutritional damages.
Weaning – Process that begins with the introduction into the child’s diet of any food element other than breastmilk, includin water and teas, and ends with the complete suspension of mother’s milk.
Weight/age deficit – The explanation is implicit in the terminology of anthropometric deficit.
Weight/age ratio percentiles – Perccentile refers to the position of an individual in a given distribution of reference. Thus, the tenth and third percentiles, as used in the text, refer to those values of weight presented by, respectively, 10% and 3% of the children in the distribution of the anthropometric parameters of reference. In this way, a child whose weight is equal or inferior to these two limits has a greater possibility of presenting a nutritional disorder. In other words, it can be affirmed that the tenth or third percentile of weight/age ratio is the diving line represented graphically on the official growth. Visualization of the chart clarifies well the principle and application of tenth percentile and third percentile.
Xerophthalmia – Ocular alterations resulting from vitamin A deficiency.
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