REFLEXIONES METODOLÓGICAS SOBRE CALIDAD DE VIDA Y ESTADO NUTRICIONAL EN COMUNIDADES RURALES DE LA FRONTERA SUR

Abstract

The term life quality appears as a category of the discourse of sustainable development and as something that should be attained. Nonetheless when reviewing the literature we find the conceptual and methodological complexity of this term and that its conceptualization has an ideological bias in the establishment of norms related to a western urban style of life. On another side, numerous physical anthropological papers have centered on the analysis of the influence of socioeconomic and cultural factors on biological phenomena such as nutritional and health status of human populations, issues of actual debate. In this article we evaluate life quality and nutritional status of five rural communities, two in southeast Mexico, two in Belize and one in northern Guatemala. For the evaluation of life quality we consider objective and subjective factors such as the use of natural resources, material infrastructure and the inhabitants perceptions on health and nutrition. The evaluation of nutritional status was made through an anthropometric survey using height-for age and weight-for-height indexes. Finally we make some reflections on the results obtained with these methodologies.