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