This paper is a study of everyday practices of food choice and use among the inhabitants of Ituqui Island, Santarém municipality, Pará. In addition, I intend to assess the impact of such practices on the local intervention programs. Anthropological studies on food habits and use have been, especially, concentrated on monolevel analysis of mental and cultural structures, systems of representation and economic and environmental infrastructures. For this study, I propose the shift of this focus to the interaction among everyday practices, the habitus and the levels mentioned above. In the Amazon, the need for more research on food habits and uses among peasant societies is added to the modest number of studies in general on these societies, specially, the caboclo ones. The study done on Ituqui Island shows high values of protein intake and low, but moderate, values of caloric intake in relation with the international standards. The processes of food choice appear to be mainly influenced by systems of local food taboos, natural resources and market intense seasonal fluctuation, class representations, and social and individual preferences. Despite the heterogeneity of the processes mentioned above, local intervention programs on nutrition and food insist in simplifying the packages introduced, thus ignoring important social and cultural variables.
food habits; caboclos; Amazonia; intervention; development
