This paper explores some changes in the eating habits of people who lived in the city of São Paulo between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. New restaurants, coffee shops and bakeries were created along with renewed hygiene requirements for the production and sale of food. At the same time habits at the table during meals were modified according to male and female differences and taste. Since that period there was on the one hand, the invention of a gastronomic style, very typical of São Paulo's citizens, although it may be referred mainly to the elite or rich classes. On the other hand, the development of a peculiar taste for food occurred at the same time that diets to lose weight became increasingly popular together with a higher control over body weight.
Eating Habits; Identity; Diets