A fome como uma quest o social nas políticas públicas brasileiras

The paper is a brief history of the politics of hunger in Brazil, highlighting the key references along the way: food security and nutrition, food sovereignty, human right to adequate food and healthy food. One approach that helps to understand the public policy is the cognitive analysis that takes into account the representations, references and historical background and social analysis. In the construction of Brazilian public policy to fight against hunger these five concepts serve as a reference to representations and actions of the actors involved in this public policy today. The state actions related to hunger rose from sporadic interventions and immediate, such as droughts in the nineteenth century, to continuous and structures assistances in the twentieth century, until to arrive at strategic and systemic at this millennium trough the Organic Law for Food Security and Nutrition, the constitution of the System and the National Policy for Food Security and Nutrition.