Eating at the crossroads: intersectional contributions to an Expanded and Implicated Clinical Nutrition

Abstract

This essay, which brings posthumous contributions from the first author, starts from the understanding of intersectionality as a theoretical-methodological tool and analytical offering that shows how multiple systems of subordination and discrimination, their consequences and structural dynamics, relate between two or more axes of social oppression. We propose an epistemological approximation between this understanding and the field of Eating and Nutrition, which contributes to thinking an intersectional eating and nutritional care and an integral praxis. Corroborating the intersection (and crossroads) metaphor, we state that several axes of power - race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, class, body size, (dis)abilities, among others - shape the avenues that structure the field of health care, including eating and nutritional care. Among such avenues and crossroads, we outline an initial proposal of an Extended and Implicated Clinical Nutrition. Among the proposed implications, we highlight reflexivity and action in power and oppression relations, placing the nutritionist as a political agent, involved with emancipatory, participatory, and socially referenced praxis. Intersectionality, therefore, is treated here as a strategy for social justice work, including eating and nutrition. We deal with relationships under construction, constituting reflective practices, the composition of meanings in the act of living eating and nutrition work.