Fighting hidden hunger

medical views on food consumption and well-being in Portugal in the 20th century

Abstract

How did doctors view and analyze the diet of the Portuguese in the 20th century? In order to find the answer to this question, in this article we revist the presence of the food regimes in portuguese medical thought, specially during the Estado Novo. We conclude that, being in close articulation with scientific development, the ideas about food and nutrition were framed in a logic of promoting the improvement of society, in which doctors emerged as privileged agents in the correction of conducts that were understood as harmful. The construction of their professional identity and social intervention was thus done in a way to reconfigure daily patterns, in an approach that went beyond classes and regions, composing an integrating notion of the country.