Abstract
Context: Food as a natural and ritualistic daily act is showcased in the Brazilian context to illustrate how historical and technological changes have impacted food systems, their transformations and consequences and how such external forces have impacted food consumption and the nutrition transition process in this developing country. Case report: Much research has been done to understand the impact of this phenomenon on urban areas of different Brazilian geographic regions but research has also demonstrated that these transformations are also encroaching on remote rural areas where the urbanization and globalization of feeding patterns are shifting from unprocessed natural food and to a new age of industrialized goods, where the manipulation of food is forgotten and food is turned into a commodity. The effect of this is that their diets have low diversity and rely on low-quality processed food staples at the same time that nutrition and food insecurity is quite high in the region. Conclusion: These transformations end, in turn, modifying a way of life and production, mainly through the rural exodus and the configuration of chaotic urban centers. New expectations arise while food choices must be more in line with the new lifestyle, unfortunately lacking nutritional contributions from the previous dietary pattern. Therefore, it is necessary to know, recognize and understand these changes in order to modify the relationship between individuals and food.
Highlights
Food is an essential and fundamental part of culture in human society, in its physiological and cultural compliance
The first approaches centered on evolutionary and ethnocentric analysis, focusing on the study of rituals and traditions determined as “foreign” by the researchers, but that were essential for the understanding of the social complex. Anthropology, in this respect, has fluctuated between studying human beings according to their biological aspects and explaining cultural characteristics independent of the relations with the environment
The Anthropology of Food ended up analyzing its object in an interdisciplinary manner, since interactions happen socially, ecologically and biologically, provided that human groups constitute themselves by their way of life and by techniques related to the environment
Summary
Food is an essential and fundamental part of culture in human society, in its physiological and cultural compliance. Food was an object of analysis just like other cultural aspects of studied societies, such as kinship. The first approaches centered on evolutionary and ethnocentric analysis, focusing on the study of rituals and traditions determined as “foreign” by the researchers, but that were essential for the understanding of the social complex. Anthropology, in this respect, has fluctuated between studying human beings according to their biological aspects and explaining cultural characteristics independent of the relations with the environment. The Anthropology of Food ended up analyzing its object in an interdisciplinary manner, since interactions happen socially, ecologically and biologically, provided that human groups constitute themselves by their way of life and by techniques related to the environment.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
