Adaptation of the Weighed Food Record Method to Households in the Peruvian Andes and Ethnographic Insights on Hunger

Abstract

This article is a methodological analysis of anthropological research on child nutrition carried out during fifteen months in a small farming community in the southern Peruvian highlands. Based on the measurement of food intake of seventy-five people during three seasons for a total of more than six hundred meals, the author explains the various ways in which she adapted the weighed food record technique for measuring dietary intake to make it acceptable in this cultural context. She also shows how this method yielded ethnographic data on nonbiological dimensions of hunger in rural households that are concealed from sight of other community members. This analysis shows that the process of collecting quantitative data is itself a sociocultural process that illuminates the realities of people's lives. This article is intended to be useful for researchers, both seasoned and neophytes, who seek a detailed discussion of doing dietary assessment in the field.