Feeding 

As investigation field this topic began to be cultivated very recently, mainly starting from 
1960, when a group of historians French collaborators of the magazine Annales. 
économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, was interested in a series of aspects of the material life 
of the societies that until then it had been generally ignored by the traditional 
historiography. Good part of its works was picked up by J. J. Hémardinquer, in Pour it 
unites l'alimentation historie. In America they have been carried out some important works, 
among which stand out: The history gives alimentaçao non Brazil, of Luis of Cámara 
Cascudo, The Puerto Rican and its feeding through its history, of Berta Cabanillas of 
Rodríguez and Eating in America: To History, of Waverley Root and Richard of 
Rochemont. Nevertheless, more remote, such antecedents can be pointed out it is the case 
of the monumental Histoire of l'alimentation you vegetate him, of A. Maurizio that 
embraces from the prehistory until our days and she/he offers a very complete square of the 
useful plants for the human feeding, presenting the diverse times and regions of their use; 
another example is the learned work of the medical Alfred Gottschalk, Histoire of 
l'alimentation et of the gastronomie that centers its study in France, but she/he brings 
interesting data on other European, Asian and American regions. Maybe they could be 
pointed out, also, some works of smaller encouragement, but in any event the properly 
scientific investigation in our matter was initiate sostenidamente hardly 2 decades ago. This 
branch of the history arises with the deliberate purpose of contributing to what you/they 
called "total history" the collaborators of the Annales. With their study it was pursued to 
enrich the retrospective vision of happening social; in other words: it was looked for to see 
the society through their foods, like part of the desire of revising the almost exclusively 
interested traditional historiography in political, economic and military aspects. The feeding 
took in interesting the historians, because it considered it to him a topic of smaller 
transcendency in happening human and for ende unaware to the high mission that was 
supposed to the history. Our discipline was born, because, inside that wave of revision 
historiográfica that she/he has not still received the backing of a definitive universal 
acceptance. For the effects of this article we will understand for history of the feeding the 
study of the origin, the formation, the validity and the changes of the or of the alimentary 
regímenes of a society. Following Max Sorre will say that: "...El régime of a group is the 
sum of foods, taken place by its territory or contributed by changes that it assures its daily 
existence when satisfying its likes and it assures its persistence in a determined group of 
conditions of life..." This definition implies the study of several aspects of the feeding of 
the societies: "the sum of foods" she/he comes to be the "readiness of foods" that they 
speak the nutricionistas, being included in that category the foods generated by the society-
half physical relationship, in the environment that is considering, as those that incorporate 
from it was, generally by means of the commercial exchange; this group of foods assures 
the "daily existence" of the group, in the first place because it satisfies its gastronomic 
preferences, that is to say, she/he has general acceptance, that which means the existence of 
habits -aspect psicosocial - of the feeding and of preparations more or less coded culinary -
aspect of the régime -; in second place, the alimentary group assures the persistence of the 
group, nutritional aspect that bears the study of the nutritious value of the elements that 
you/they form the régime; lastly, the sum of foods works inside certain conditions of life, 
with that which you ends in the socioeconomic aspects of the feeding that can determine 
the coexistence of different diets that although, in an effort generalizador they can 
tipificarse like belonging to a certain society, they present variations according to the strata 
that that social group is composed. The same author sustains that all régime is made up of 
elements that it classifies in 3 categories: essential, those basic foods whose grouping is 
characteristic of the studied society; secondary, those that are dedicated to complete or to 
substitute to the essential ones when these lack or they are scare and deluxe, those whose 
consumption doesn't fill a fundamental physiologic necessity and they can be considered as 
superfluous. It interests us here to study the origin, the formation, the validity and the 
changes of the traditional alimentary régime of the Venezuelan society. In our very little 
country it has been written on the matter, almost everything owes to professionals of the 
medicine and it was elaborated in the decade of 1940. The first study that contains a 
historical sketch of our feeding owes to Arturo Guevara and The polyhedron of the 
nutrition is entitled. The goal of this work was to give a vision of the problem of the 
nutrition in those years, for that which the necessary author considered to include an 
extensive historical section. Guevara makes use of varied sources: ordinances of town 
councils, laws and ordinances, statistical of production, literary texts, it presses, 
epistolarios, etc. In this rehearsal a series is presented of statistical of consumption, mainly 
of livestock, a so much acríticas in its making, but interesting in its graphic presentation, 
until the point of constituting novel positions for our historiography. Another work that it 
should be mentioned it is The feeding in Venezuela, of Fermín Vélez Boza. It is a study 
that incorporates the historical thing as necessary element to explain the reality alimentary 
Venezuelan of their time, pointing out the diverse contributions that to the author's 
approach they formed the diet that considers typical of the Venezuelan of 1940. In their 
investigation Vélez Boza it uses, apart from the stories of columnists, travelers and 
etnógrafos, documents of accounting of conquering expeditions and colonizadoras that for 
the first time are used in our historiography with the purpose of reconstructing the material 
life of the Venezuelan society of colonial times. Both works are pioneer in the matter, not 
only in Venezuela, but even regarding Europe, where you began to carry out investigations 
of this nature. We don't know other works that have been about the history of our feeding. 
This bibliographical shortage constitutes a methodological difficulty of span that together 
to the obstacles that are presented in the access to the most appropriate sources for our 
study, to be unpublished or you disperse or to have disappeared, they make that the work 
dedicated to present the history of our feeding is complicated, expensive and slow. 
Sources 
It is convenient to point out, although it is only in passing, the main sources for the study of 
our discipline. In the first place, they would be the registrations of accounting of such 
institutions as convents, hospitals and barracks, in which valuable seats that indicate type, 
quantity and price of the consumed foods generally appear. These documents are in the 
repositorios of the General File of the Nation, of the Archivo Arquidiocesano, of the 
historical files of the municipal town councils, of the National Academy of the History, etc. 
on the other hand, the geographical descriptions that you/they go from the calls are "you 
relate" and "corografías" until books of properly this geography to whose side should be 
placed the memoirs of travelers, so rich in observations on the feeding of the societies that 
you/they visited. They are also important the production statistics and of consumption, even 
when in general they date of very recent times. The literature, in particular novels and 
stories, offer equally material profitable, especially those that can be classified of of 
manners. Of more specificity they are the kitchen recetarios that in their majority they are 
hand written zealously guarded in private hands. The press is another remarkable source for 
the information of alimentary character: the commercial publicity by means of which offer 
services and consumption goods, the articles in that you/they think about or they debate the 
problems of shortage or of costs, the indication of quantities and prices of foods in the 
import lists or export, they are some of the data that can be obtained of the periodic 
publications. The medical works on the feeding, the books of dietary, the summaries of 
hygiene, the repertoires of medical matter and the studies on sanitary conditions, are of 
having forced consultation to know the alimentary history. Another source type exists, not 
written but not for it less important: it is the objects used in the gathering, it harvests, 
storage, preparation, expended and I consummate of the foods; in this sense the machete, 
the trapiche, the mold of showy or that of cheeses, the vessels, the battery of the kitchen 
and the table trousseau constitute important testimonies for the reconstruction of the 
alimentary past of all society, because the characteristic useful deesos helps us to know 
from the type of predominant economic relationship until the phenomenons psicosociales 
related with the consumption. 
Periodización 
The form should be discarded used up to now to present the history of our feeding, that is to 
say, already continuing the periods classic of: indigenous time, time of the conquest and 
colonization, time of the War of Independence and republican time. When being the 
feeding of the Venezuelan society, it could not be spoken in such a sense of a "indigenous 
period" but only as something previous to her that will be been able to include exclusively 
as antecedent. Also, to seek to give chronological courts in our matter assisting to the mere 
political plane is without place to doubt an absurdity. The evolution in the political ways 
for which it passed our country doesn't coincide with our alimentary history; like we will 
see in the course of this article, evidences don't exist to distinguish the general alimentary 
régime to our society during good part of the Republic, of which existed from the XVIII 
century, in full colonial time. Of there that it seems more convenient to demarcate the 
formation phases, change and decadence, for which it seems to have lapsed the régime 
alimentary Creole. 
Formation of the régime alimentary Creole: At the end of the XVIII century it can be 
proven the existence of a typical alimentary régime of the nascent Venezuelan society 
whose structures were come forging from the XVI century. Parallelly to the process of 
having forged social the formation of an alimentary régime ran whose constituent elements 
included from the corn, the bovine meat, the sugar, the yucca and the beans basic -foods - 
until the cocoa, and the coffee, as complementary foods. It interests us to know how you 
arrived to such an alimentary association, starting from patterns of different consumption as 
they were it the European and the aborigine. The aboriginal régime was founded in the corn 
and the yucca, supplemented with some protein animal product of the hunt and of the 
fishing, and with the natural edulcorante of the honey. It didn't include fatty in their 
culinary preparations and the condiment was par excellence the pepper. When depending 
most of the tribes of the hunt, the fishing and the gathering, it didn't exist among them a 
fixed schedule of foods, neither sophisticated culinary preparations were made. On the 
contrary, the pattern of European consumption had like base the meat (it vaccinates, 
swinish and ovina), the wheat, the wine and the vegetable fats (olive oil) or animals (head 
shortening or of pig) and it used the cane sugar, the salt and the spices of traditional use in 
the Old Continent. The first contacts among both alimentary associations took place in the 
area of the Antilles, species of transculturación laboratory and the reactions of both parts 
were of mutual rejection, that which is explained easily by the force that you/they still had 
the alimentary habits in those pre-industrial times very resistant to the change, stiller, when 
being the encounter of cultures that you/they had remained from their origins almost 
absolutely isolated. Nevertheless, the necessity, more powerful than the habit, she/he forced 
the Europeans to adopt certain Aboriginal foods to assure their survival in lands that were 
ignored them. Such it is the case of the casabe consumption on the part of the conquerors 
who in spite of considering it insipid and of difficult ingestion -you compared him with the 
chips - they not only consumed it but rather they also learned quickly the process of their 
preparation. It could not be otherwise, given the easy of the cultivation of the yucca and the 
durable of the casabe, because this contrary to the wheat cookies, resisted for much more 
time the effects of the humidity. In this sense, it can be said that the casabe contributed 
notably to the success of the conquest in the hot lands. On the other hand, although in a 
beginning, the aboriginal ones rejected of plane the consumption of sugar, meat and the 
wine, soon they took the first pleasure of both until making them it leaves of their diet. The 
domain that quickly the Europeans exercised on the aboriginal ones because of the 
superiority of their armament and organization, she/he made that such a power extended to 
their foods that were placed in a superior hierarchy to that of the indigenous groceries. This 
way the food par excellence of the conqueror, the wheat, superior was considered to the 
corn and the yucca and the bread of the European was identified with the derived prestige 
of the dominance by him exercised, what was consecrated by the fact of being the only one 
that the Christian religion admitted in the practice of one of its sacraments. This 
circumstance made that you looks for to imitate the European, being believed that it could 
be participated of its qualities, considered superiors by means of such an attitude. The 
conquering hosts that passed to mainland had lived their American adaptation in the 
Antilles or in Mesoamérica, of there that is already familiarized with the basic foods of the 
aboriginal régime, being constituted this way in payees of certain alimentary habits that 
didn't exist in the territory of what today is Venezuela. Example of it is it the habit of 
drinking chocolate. Although it is sustained that the cocoa grew wild in some regions of our 
country, we don't know testimony some that attributes to our aboriginal ones the 
consumption of the prepared drink with this almond whose diffusion focus was the Meso-
American region and whose cultural difusores was the Spaniards who immediately became 
fond greatly to her, not only taking it to the Antilles and Sud América but also to Europe. 
Similar origin should be attributed to the use of the tamal, one of whose varieties constitute 
our hallaca. Without a doubt some Spanish brought I get its culinary traditions that served 
as base, together with the indigenous kitchen, for the formation in the ways of Creole 
consumption, in such a way it can be affirmed that the period of formation of the typical 
alimentary régime of our society reveals, on one hand, the presence of basic elements of the 
aboriginal diet, as the corn and the yucca, in round maize loaf form and casabe respectively, 
and for other, the European and American, carried out introduction of elements those more 
than the times starting from the Antillean and Meso-American regions. Also, it can be 
asserted that at the beginning of that formative phase the coexistence was given highly 
separated from the European alimentary regímenes and aborigine. On one hand the 
Europeans, taken by the force of their habits, they attempted with relative success the 
reconstruction of their alimentary landscape in the again conquered regions. Be enough to 
mention as illustration the cultivation of the wheat in the valley of Caracas, almost from the 
foundation of the city and until well entered the XVIII century, for what you/they were 
implanted in the region several wheat mills, and this cereal ended up constituting one of the 
most important lines in extraction of the incipient city, for the supply of some islands of the 
Caribbean and of the city of Cartagena in the New Granada. 
However, in the first two centuries of the conquest, the relative isolation that you/they were 
suffering some colonies regarding the metropolis, among which she/he must make an 
appointment the county of Venezuela; the difficulties of acclimatization of certain 
European species (wheat) or the success of the transplante of other (livestock, birds, and 
vegetables), together to the rich one I exchange intercolonial, they took to the formation of 
the typical alimentary pattern of our traditional society. Already in the beginnings of the 
XVIII century you begins to find in the documents the mention of prepared foods "to the 
way of the country", symptom of the configuration of the régime object of our study. From 
then on there are flashes of a new kitchen, to which will contribute besides the Indian and 
of Spanish, the African that I eat domestic slave assumes almost with exclusivity cook's 
function, enriching it with his particular art of cooking. At the end of the same century 
coming influences are also manifested of the Antilles, but this time of the French colonies, 
Englishmen and Dutch, which had achieved a remarkable degree of stability and they 
intensified their trade, licit and illicit with mainland. She/he got rich this way the wealth 
culinary Venezuelan. In this respect it is necessary to mention the "corbullón" that is not 
more than the transformation that suffered the French court-bouillon in the Martinique and 
in the Guadalupe, or the "tarcarí" that corresponds to the form of cooking with "curry", 
spice this of common use in the English Antilles. Equal happened to the "selzer" that 
responds to a preparation German called sulzer, introduced through the Dutch islands. 
Some of the basic elements of the European régime entered of full in the Creole pattern; 
such it is only the case of the meat, the sugar and the fat, this last one in their animal form, 
because the oleaginous European vegetable par excellence, the olive tree, didn't prosper in 
our lands. Others suffered a great decrease in their use, as the wheat that was substituted 
almost totally by the corn. On the other hand, the aboriginal basic elements entered to be 
part of the Creole pattern almost without alterations, remember you the round maize loaf 
and the casabe. The mention of some foods can not be obviated that were getting paid every 
time bigger popularity: especially we refer to the rice and the banana, Asian of origin, 
introduced both for the Spaniards. Of the Asia another food was also brought that will end 
up having importance in our diet: the coconut. By the middle of the XVIII century it can be 
proven the existence of the alimentary régime that we have called "Creole or traditional", 
which prolonged their general validity for the whole XIX century and until the first 4 
decades of the present century. Such a régime, although it remained unalterable in their 
basic elements, she/he had some incorporations that came to enrich it, for the affluence 
from ends of the XIX century of European immigration and for the import and diffusion 
that had some come foods of the north of America. As example, be enough to remember the 
influence of the Italian immigration that stimulated the adoption of some culinary 
preparations (mainly the pastas) and also the wave of hams, salted meat, trenches and other 
imports, coming from United States. But these new elements were perceived fundamentally 
in the urban means, because in the field it persisted almost invariable the colonial régime. 
Nevertheless that this régime was typical of our society, it is necessary to establish some 
variations according to the strata that formed it, because locating us in the colonial Caracas, 
the feeding of the mantuanos was not similar to that of The Candlemas's parishioners, and 
less still to that of the peons and slaves of the next country properties to the capital. Rafael 
M. Baralt and Ramón Díaz remind us that the yucca and other roots "...servían of bread to 
the poor person and of greenness to the rich, as soon as found but with the wheat". In this 
sense a hierarchy of the breads could settle down in whose peak that of wheat, white bread, 
was located like she/he was called, the military and religious conqueror's bread whose 
prestige stayed until the republican times and to the one that nutritious properties associated 
with the civilization and the progress were attributed. Immediately later it was placed the 
bread of corn, our round maize loaf, that although it could not be equaled to the wheat 
bread, she/he ended up spreading until in the population's layers high 
socioeconómicamente, and she/he even received the backing from the dignificación when 
being included it in the famous Manual of courtesy of Manuel Antonio Carreño, in which 
the correction is indicated which should be observed when consuming it in the table. 
Subsequently the yucca bread came, "the indigenous casabe", before Columbus survivor 
whose consumption and preparation goes back at least to the third millennium before 
Christ, predominant bread in the rural environment and especially in the east regions and 
Guayana, and that, even when it figured among the products of it expended current in the 
market of Caracas during the XVIII century, it always conserved its connotation of inferior 
food. Finally it would be necessary to point out the banana bread, in form of slices or of 
tostones, the slaves' fundamental maintenance, traditionally associated to our negritud, to 
which properties favorecedoras of the laziness and indolence were attributed. Beautiful 
Andrés, Alejandro of Humboldt and Jean-Baptiste Boussingault coincide with many 
colonial officials in noticing that being the banana of extremely easy cultivation, it 
fomented the slack, being for enemy ende of the progress and of the civilization. In this 
brief recount of the breads, we are represented the traditional scale that she/he goes from 
the savage to the one civilized and likewise the identification of the diverse social strata 
with their respective breads. If we move to the environment of the drinks we find how the 
wine of the Europeans maintained its prestige of drink superior, even when its use could not 
end up being generalized by the fact of its high cost and for the existence of another drink 
whose cheapness made it prevailing: the guarapo. This competition among those derived of 
the grape and those of cane of sugar one lived intensely in colonial times, as she/he attests it 
the "Brief that presents the rum", published by Mauro Páez Pumar, in Origins of the poetry 
colonial Venezuelan, poetic composition in which their anonymous author refers to the 
persecution that suffered the consumption of rum, for opposition to the tolerance with 
which he looked at himself the use of the Spanish liquor of grape, going out in defense of 
the first one with certain tone of rebelliousness and arguyendo that it owed preferírsele 
because it was of the earth and not ultramarine as the other one. It is difficult to end up 
knowing the nutritious value of the régime alimentary colonial Creole, in the sense of 
establishing the caloric value of the daily ingesta accurately for inhabitant. This difficulty is 
not only calculated in the fact of the anachronism dangers in that can be incurred when 
trying to apply charts of value of foods built recently to the diet of remote times 
mechanically, but also in the obstacle that means the shortage of documents that you/they 
allow the quantitative and qualitative reconstruction of the alimentary consumption in 
relatively distant times. However, for the case of the county of Venezuela we have a 
document that contains what could be considered our first consumption statistic. It is the 
general Plane or cosmographic state, phísico, ethnic, economic, political and historical of 
the county of Venezuela, of the friar capuchino José Antonio Domínguez, dated in 1775. 
For luck for the historians this work includes a called section "I consummate and 
extraction" in which the author registered his observations in precise and certain form, 
noticing that his data should be taken in the expert that they refer to all the people of the 
county "without distinction". It is convenient to remember that, for the date in that this 
description, the county of Venezuela was written it was integrated approximately, for the 
territory of the current states Miranda, Guárico, Aragua, Carabobo, Yaracuy, Cojedes, 
Portuguese, Lara, Falcon, and Trujillo and for the Federal District. According to the 
corografía of the capuchino, the basic elements of the alimentary régime of then they were: 
the meat, the round maize loaf, the casabe, those "pottages" (rice, beans, caraotas, 
quinchonchos, peas, peas, etc.), the cocoa, the salt and the showy one. The data come in old 
measures that, converted to the current ones they give the following results on consumption 
newspaper for person, in g: corn, 616,96; yucca, 252,10; pottages, 107,30; cocoa, 28,99; 
showy, 63,02; meat, 409,67 and salt, 26,82. She/he gets the attention in these data, the high 
meat consumption for what is worthwhile to transcribe the explanation that in this respect 
she/he gives the author: "In the intelligence that all the people of this county, without age 
distinction neither sex, eat meat it less three times a day, this way for the habit like to be 
worth cheap, because in all the plains voucher at two real the fresh one and at four the 
cured and salted, and making an entire body and the waste considers each person according 
to what I have seen 14 ounces for head boy with big to this respect they are 13 you 
enrapture a year for head; I don't exclude the vigils because regularly they don't stay in the 
plains and in Caracas, there is always the same consumption in the Lent, and the excess that 
can have in this part it should be discounted of the spoils of the head that don't eat up. 
Neither I exclude this way from this consumption to the Indians because they eat more, as 
because when they have own heads they kill the first ones that find that they complain 
every day to the missionaries the owners of clusters. Neither I exclude the boys, because 
these they eat lunch, they eat, meriendan and they have dinner meat hoe [sic] and chorote". 
If we apply to the mentioned enumeration, the Chart of composition of foods of the 
National Institute of Nutrition, with the due cautions, that is to say, trying to look for the 
type of food of that list that is the equivalent one next to that of the XVIII century, it must 
conclude that the total of calories of the same one ascends at 3.290. This figure that it 
surprises at first sight, remember you that today is considered good as value of the diet per 
cápita to the industrialized countries, 2.500 calories, it would seem appropriate for the 
XVIII century, when she/he wore out much more energy that today, for the absence of the 
comforts that has introduced the mechanization of the daily works. We can not accept these 
figures like definitive, because you grieve they constitute a first approach subject to ulterior 
verifications, but we consider that they are not impossible if she/he takes into account that 
in other regions and it stops remote times, the specialists have arrived had not only been 
similar but even superiors. This way for example, F. Spooner points out for a Spanish fleet 
in route toward America in 1560, an equivalent portion to 2.800 calories, for a Hispanic-
Portuguese expedition directed to the África in 1578, 4.125 and for a Spanish convoy in 
Naples in 1641, 2.863; on the other hand Andrzj Wyczanski affirms that the Poles in the 
XVI century consumed a daily portion with value of 4.025 calories. C.S.L. Davies 
concludes that the portions of the marine Englishman of the XVI century represented 4.265 
calories; and Michel Morineau sustains that the value of the diet of the Dutch journeyman 
of the XVII century was of 3.400 calories. 

Validity and changes of the régime alimentary Creole: If we observe the elements that it 
was composed, according to José Antonio Domínguez, the diet of the inhabitants of the 
county of Venezuela and we remember the differences in the types of bread consumed by 
the different social strata, we would reach the conclusion that if it is certain that the meat, 
the showy one, the pottages, the cocoa and the salt, they can be considered foods common 
to the whole population, the same thing doesn't happen to the corn, the casabe and with a 
great absentee of the list: the wheat. Continuing our deductions would find that, I save as 
regards breads, it can be thought of the existence of a typical alimentary régime of the 
Venezuelan society. This relative homogeneity of the diet went getting lost gradually when 
incorporating new foods and drinks and when being formed new alimentary likes in the 
urban sectors and in a special way in its dominant groups, while the rural and urban 
population of low resources, they maintained the basic elements of the colonial diet, 
characteristic of an agrarian society. It was natural that was this way, because the strange 
foods, the new culinary preparations and the cared drinks, generally of high prices, they 
could only consume them the economically superior strata. When entering our society in 
the XIX, concluded century the emancipation war and beginning the definitively 
independent Republic in the political thing, the pointed out division left accentuating and in 
spite of the fact that quantitatively the typical diet decreased to the same elements of the 
colonial alimentary régime, coming from the productive binomial country property-conuco, 
qualitatively the differences were deepened between dominant and dominated, between 
urban population and rural population. Inside this process she/he took place along the 
century, in the cities, the progressive generalization of some foods of the diet of the 
dominant groups. The feeding citadina spread to be standardized, getting rich with the 
strange novelties that left adding. An attentive reading of the press decimonónica allows to 
appreciate an alimentary evolution characterized by the import of eatable, the transplante of 
the European restaurant, the adoption of French likes and Englishmen and the 
institucionalización in the good ways of the Old Continent. The first thing that jumps 
visible in the registrations of cared goods is the great variety of nutritious products: hams of 
Virginia, Westfalia and Bologna; meats and fish, salted or smoky, of Europe and North 
America; milky products of the same origin; all luck of English, French galletería and 
Dutchwoman; she/he pastures Italian and canned groceries. The drinks are also plentiful: 
German and English beers, Dutch gin, whisky, brandy and brandy, French, Dutch or 
Antillean liquors and a great selection of French and German wines. This without counting 
the cubiertería, the porcelain chinas and of glass of diverse origins and a great variety of 
useful of kitchen. Also, the old inns and inns went giving the step to new local of it 
expended of culinary preparations and drinks in whose announcements were insisted in the 
comfort, the atmosphere and the decoration and in which offered until the most 
sophisticated French plates to the letter. Symptoms these of the arrival, from the decade of 
1840, of the restaurants. As extension of the old bakeries or even in independent form, they 
made their appearance the pastries that date of the same time. The good welcome that 
you/they received such nutritious products and culinary preparations led to the formation of 
habits that you/they were incorporating the European likes. From very early, before it 
finished the first half of the century, indications of a certain Frenchification are perceived 
that is reflected in the creation of characters of the journalistic chronicle whose refinement 
to the European became in white of some humorists. On the other hand, the dominant 
group, in exercise of the political power, achieved that by means of an ordinance-law of the 
Congress (March 17 1855) she/he settled down in all the universities and schools of the 
Republic, an obligatory class of courtesy and good ways with duration of one year and 
daily frequency of one hour, and whose text should be the Manual of courtesy and good 
ways, of Manuel Antonio Carreño. A brief revision of this manual takes to the conclusion 
that its normative sources were eminently European. Beside this unfolding of delights, 
novelties and good ways, the thick of the population, mainly in the fields, it continued 
practicing the colonial alimentary habits, with very few exceptions. One of them was the 
popularization of the consumption of wheat bread among the urban sectors of low 
resources. Of there that she/he settles in the documents and publications of the time the fact 
that two classes of flours were manufactured, being the one of "second" obviously the 
employee in this diffusion. In spite of the derived difficulties of the lack of statistical of 
reliable consumption, it is possible to affirm that the traditional alimentary régime, suffered 
along the century XIX progressive deteriorations. It can be pointed out as illustration, and 
to merely indicative title that the meat consumption (of bovine livestock) on the part of the 
Venezuelan it diminished during the XIX century. Indeed, of Agustín Codazzi's estimates it 
is deduced that it stops 1839 the daily consumption per cápita it is of 103,42 g, 
approximately. For contrast, for 1873, basing us on the data that Miguel gives will Knit, we 
would obtain a consumption for head of hardly 37,32 g. It has not been bigger the meat 
consumption until half-filled of our century, like it is evidenced of the official statistics that 
allow to settle down for 1939 a daily consumption for inhabitant of 33,96 g and it stops 
1950 of 38,41 g. The validity of the régime alimentary traditional Creole, common to most 
of the Venezuelan population, is prolonged until very our entrance century. It is only 
starting from 1940, approximately, with the violent transformation of the country of 
agricultural in oil tanker that one manifests in the triumphant process of the urbanization, 
the vertiginous rural exodus and the increment of the purchasing power of the dominant 
groups, when it begins to it turns affected the typical diet. These phenomenons take place 
the I eradicate of the rural population that comes to augment the urban one, losing their 
cultural identity quickly to be prey easy in the way of life citadino, disclaimer of their 
traditions, destroyer of their habits, uniformador of the daily life for the sake of the 
generalization of the behavior that you/they impose the big urban concentrations. Such a 
process impacts in the organization and functions of the family group modifying the 
traditional division of the work that was given in its breast gradually: the woman leaves the 
house to work and you/he/she restricts, when you/he/she doesn't eliminate, the time that 
before dedicated to the domestic works, with the rising deterioration of the quality of the 
diet that gives more and more in the face of the saving of time and efforts that mean the 
frozen, semi-elaborated or already clever foods to consume. This invasion of the foods 
industrialized in the domestic environment and the lack of a control of truly efficient 
quality brings certain dangers for the health, among which it would be necessary to 
highlight the noxious effects taken place by certain preservatives employees in the 
procedures of having canned. After the Second World War the imports increased, the 
installation of the North American system of life began with the rising appearance of the 
gassy drinks, the one expended of the called sausages "hot dogs", "the sándwiches", the ice 
creams, the proliferation of the frozen foods and the tecnificación of the culinary works. 
The modern technology invaded the homes with numerous devices (refrigerator, cooks to 
gas, etc.) and equally the factories, of family nature that you/they became notably 
automated factories. The restaurant, before exclusive place of the rich groups, was 
popularized contributing to this change especially the Italian and Spanish immigration, 
spreading this way plates like the spaghettis, the pizza and the paella that you/they will go 
being integrated to the daily life of the inhabitants of the cities. The alimentary 
transformation of the Venezuelan of our time has been reinforced by the advertising 
messages of the different media that get paid more and more importance. I testify of the 
impact of the mentioned changes they give a series of works appeared in the decade of the 
fifty, in which the crisis of our alimentary identity is denounced. Maybe the most 
outstanding examples are: Happiness of the earth: small apology of our old agriculture, of 
Mario Briceño Iragorry, Menu. Vernaculismos, of Aníbal Lisandro Alvarado, and the 
Geography gastronomic Venezuelan, of Ramón David León. Today would be difficult to 
establish the diet type of the Venezuelan, but there would not be difficulty in affirming that 
the traditional Creole régime seemed to be in extinction roads. Amid this complex situation, 
the nutritional differences, among the different social strata, they have become bigger. 
Parallelly to the advance of the urbanization process she/he has gone the relative autonomy 
that allowed the conuco, almost missing today being shrunk. On the other hand, the 
complication of the distribution of the foods to national scale, characterized by a growing 
commercial intermediation, and the dependence every time bigger than the imports, they 
have urged the groceries in such a measure that inside the mark of the existent economic 
inequalities one runs the serious risk that she/he already stagnates our slow process of 
economic growth and social improvement. This panorama is confirmed by the conclusions 
that the specialists have reached in nutrition who you/they coincide in pointing out that 
during the last 40 years, in spite of the faulty information that one has on the matter, 
important inequalities are perceived between the caloric value and proteínico of the diet of 
the Venezuelans according to the socioeconomic strata, evidently in damage of a great 
majority with low revenues. Statistical appreciations confirm that reality: for 1962 it was 
established that while the population's 2,04% consumed like average 3.100 daily calories, 
73,64% had a daily diet whose value oscillated between the 1.832 and 2.001 calories. To 
enlarge even more the statistical information the nutrition Atlas can be consulted, published 
by the National Institute of Nutrition. In other words, most of the population meets with 
such a weakened purchasing power that of suponérsele the intention of reviving the Creole 
diet of other times would be helpless of carrying out it. 
Conclusions 
The impression that causes a revision of our alimentary historical process is the one from a 
marked tendency to the nutritional deterioration and of an increase of the dependence of the 
imports. After this brief magazine of the destination that has had our alimentary tradition: 
Could we affirm correctly that the hallaca and the round maize loaf are our popular plates 
or would it be necessary rather to wonder if at the moment they are it the pasta, the hot dog 
or the beer? Think you that the percentage of 73,64%, mentioned before corresponds to 
families whose revenues the Bs doesn't overcome. 1.000,00 (1987) monthly and that the 
price of the meat, of the corn, of the fish, of the fruits and of other elements characteristic 
of the régime alimentary Creole it has suffered limitless rises. The challenge that presents 
that reality forces to reconsider from the problems of the production, distribution and 
commercialization of the foods, until the reeducación of our consumption habits, with the 
urgent end of to improve the conditions of life and to try to revive good part of our culinary 
wealth, of high nutritious value. To take ahead such made, she/he should take into account 
the historical investigation on our feeding. Of there the necessity to deepen the few existent 
studies with the purpose of putting to the history of the feeding, like discipline, in capacity 
to collaborate to reach the signal goals. In such a sense, she/he would be necessary to carry 
out among other works: the making of a guide of sources for the study of this branch of the 
history; the position of their fundamental problem, for that which becomes necessary to 
analyze the traditional diets trying to establish their nutritious value, to investigate the 
evolution of the "I like" Creole and to rescue the abundant recetarios of last times 
systematizing them and adapting them to the current necessities to have elements that can 
serve from stimulus to the reorientation of today's habits with the purpose of activating the 
nutritional improvement of all the Venezuelans