To eat well is to eat a lot: food habits and body images in Tahiti

For about ten years, the alarming rise in French Polynesia of obesity and linked pathologies (diabetes, arterial high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases...), has been revealed: the average prevalence rate of obesity for French Polynesians is today 3 or 4 times higher than that for the metropolitan population. However only die nutritional aspect of this problem has been highlighted. The objective of our study is to better understand the development of obesity, taking into account the cultural determiners of food practices as well as social factors. We show that representations of the body stemming from pre-European period and the rapid transformation of Polynesian food practices towards a westernized model, play a major role in these pathologies.