OBJECTIVE: The objective of this qualitative study was to present and discuss the flexible characteristics emerging from reports on food intake of patients submitted to dietary treatment for hypertension control and the impact of anxiety on their health. Food intake reports were analyzed as social representations and their implications in nutritional investigations were discussed. METHODS: Thirty hypertensive subjects were interviewed by means of home visits; 15 were low-income and 15 were middle-class individuals. The 24-hour diet recall method was used to obtain information on food intake, in association with diet history and a questionnaire on meal frequency, in the context of semi-structured in-depth interviews which were taped, transcribed and had their content analyzed. RESULTS: Social representations situated between theory and practice expressed fluctuations and contradictions regarding food intake. Such representations were grouped in categories such as: irregularity in food ingestion and food purchasing; intake method in accordance with the type of food served; oscillation in the number of people eating together; answers induced by the interviewer in search of accurate answers; lack of memory of the interviewed; imprecision and divergent reports on food intake; use of quantitative parameters whose reference values are sensitive to the subject and the presence of third parties witnessing the interview. The methodological strategy employed allowed the observation that there is less precision in the information on food intake than expected, as a result of its being composed of social representations, that is to say, mental constructions of reality. The results also suggest that the food inquiry approach for subjects submitted to dietary prescription may be insufficient to investigate their eating habits.
food intake; food inquiry; social representation; hypertension; diet
