The eating habits is one of the most complex aspects in the identity of a people. It is formed by the interaction of many different aspects of social life, such as politic, economic, geographic or technologic. In order to understand this process, many researchers from health areas are using the knowledge and methods of social sciences, such as History, to understand this process - as it is the case of this work.

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To comprehend how it occurred in Brasil, a search for its reasons went back to the European medieval times, going through the time of Portuguese navigations and life in land in the beginning of the XVI century, adding, posteriorly, the influence of the South American indigenous natives and black slaves in this cultural caldron which was the Colonial Brazil.

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The first three centuries of History in the Portuguese America (1500 to 1808) was marked by high prices and lack of basic food products - especially those coming from Portugal - insufficient agriculture for subsistence and precarious transport condition of food to more inland regions. Those factors, added by the vertiginous increase in the population - in particular in the new discovered region of the mines - resulted in a scenery of endemic malnutrition, whose main basic food was the manioc flour (tapioca), corn and its derivates, beans and jerked beef (dried and salted), which are still the basic foods in many parts of modern Brazil.

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But despite those unfortunate outcomes, not everything had bad consequences in Brazil’s History. Perhaps due to the harshness of the time, the suffering brought out the best of people in that time: overcoming difficulties. The mixture of foods, tastes and ways of cooking culminated in the formation - and later recognition - of the most famous and praised Baiana and Mineira cuisines in Brazil. Like flowers growing amongst thorns, the blossom of those two cuisines are the best example from this troubled colonial period: true jewels in the culture of modern Brazil. 

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* This book is an extract from a thesis presented in the Faculty of Public Health of the University of Sao Paulo, to obtain a PhD degree in Public Health. The original copy, in Portuguese, is available at the library of the university (FSP/USP).