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BENJAMIN S. ORLOVE Stability and Change in Highland Andean Dietary Patterns Approaches to Andean Dietary Patterns The diet of the highland Andean peasants reflects their complex history. The virtual isolation of South America before European conquest and the emergence of civilizations from pre-agricultural societies account in part for the strong presence in the diet of locally domesticated crops and animals capable of being produced in difficult environmental circumstances and of satisfying human nutritional needs. Some of those crops and animals are still found only in the Andes; others have spread through the world. With these unique elements and a long autonomous development, Andean dietary patterns have offered a satisfactory solution to many of the problems faced in trying to support human life in harsh environments at high altitudes. Andean highlanders also resemble peasants in other parts of Latin America and elsewhere in the world. They seek to combine some household subsistence production with cash earnings obtained through wage labor or the sale of crops and animals. They are dominated, economically and politically, by elites linked to an international order. These peasants accommodate many features of their lives, including their diets, to this situation of subordination and control of certain productive resources. The interplay of the cash and the subsistence economies affects their diet and nutrition. Dietary patterns in the Andes are also influenced by the differences in status between peasants and other groups. This separation of groups resembles ethnic differentiation in some ways. Although it is no longer accurate to describe the Andes as if its population could neatly be divided into Indians and mestizos, a simple class model would fail to recognize the objective and subjective distinctions between these groups. 481 V. The Political Economy and the Political Ecology of Contemporary Foodways These general features of Andean society-adaptation to environment, class domination, status differences-have parallels in other societies, although the nature of the environmental constraints and the class structure are unique to the Andes. The traditional diet may be considered adaptive in the general sense that it offers most of the population adequate and balanced nutrition. A general trend toward replacing locally produced native foods with purchased Western-style foods has been accompanied by a decline in nutritional status. This shift is the result of several forces: population pressure in the highlands, increasing participation in wage labor on the part of highland peasants, and national economic policy. Although the dietary patterns in the Andean highlands are in many ways representative of those of other peasant groups, the extreme nature of the environment and the particular history of the region have shaped food production and consumption along with many other aspects of economic and social life. Uniqueness may itself have parallels in other dietary patterns; a comparison of diets in many areas would reveal not only common characteristics , but a number of idiosyncratic ones as well. This paper examines stability and change in Andean dietary patterns. Traditional diets, emphasizing locally produced starchy staples, met the nutritional needs of most peasants, despite some risk of insufficient levels of micro-nutrients , particularly vitamin A, and of inadequate caloric intake as a result either of unpredictable crises (e. g., disease and drought) or of low income. Some peasants have shifted away from a heavy reliance on subsistence production because of growing population pressure on the land or a desire to have higher cash incomes. The new foods in the Andean diet are ones whose prices are subsidized, whether imports such as wheat and cooking oil or coastal products such as sugar and rice. The production and consumption levels of highland products, whose prices have not been subsidized, have grown far less. The changes in dietary patterns reflect the influence of preferences on demand as well as that of price subsidies on supply. Prestige factors seem to influence the choice of new foods. This shift away from a subsistence economy and diet has had two somewhat opposed effects on nutritional status. On the one hand, higher incomes (taking into account the cash value of subsistence production as well as monetary earnings ) are associated with higher caloric intake and nutritional status. On the other hand, an increase in the proportion of purchased rather than home-produced food is tied to poorer nutrition. The latter effect appears to be the stronger one for the majority of highland peasants. However, this shift away from a traditional diet is not necessarily a permanent one. Under some circumstances , highland Andean peasants can expand the role of...

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