O acaso dos casos: estudos sobre alimentação-nutrição, cultura e história

Abstract

The reflection developed from three case studies - the food of the Portuguese seamen of the nineteenth century, the situation of food and nutritional security of a remaining quilombo community and food referred to black slaves in Brazil - seeks to show that the value (biological and cultural) attributed to food, is directly related to the notion of what is a healthy diet. With reference to the Portuguese Navy medical manuscripts, scientific books of that time and the narratives of travelers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we seek to demonstrate that current scientific knowledge associated with the feeding habit of the European elite were the explanatory models adopted to disqualify foods and the food of the colonized, as well as the refusal, by the seamen, of the feed imposed to them. Moreover, it also occurs today because the prevalent biomedical model dismisses the value of ratings given to foods by traditional peoples, ignoring that some were taken as scientific to the early nineteenth century. For these and other reasons presented throughout this work, we conclude that it is necessary to adopt a critical look to the history of nutrition. A look valid for all professionals who work with food and nutrition of collectivities for those facing the past or those facing the current moment