56 



INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY— PUBLICATION NO. 3 



tea. Individual checking showed tliat it is probable 

 that proportionately more forastcro households use 

 commercial tea, but the majority use herb tea because 

 of taste and price. (6) It should be borne in mind 

 that I have no control of the accuracy of these re- 

 ports, other than that obtained by the usual ethno- 

 logical techniques of interview and recheck with 

 informants. Therefore, I have attempted no elab- 

 orate statistical manipidation of the data, have not 

 reduced them to constants, other than percentages, 

 and have not employed the standard statistical 

 measures of error. (7) Finally, no attempt has been 

 made to measure or tabulate quantities of food con- 

 sumed, either in bulk terms or in terms of nutritional 

 values. Although the subjects were asked to state 

 quantities in their reports, this was for the purpose 

 of focusing their attention upon the food objects 

 themselves, and they stated the quantities in un- 

 standardized conventional terms. 



The purpose, in short, was to broaden the base 

 of the tisual impressionistic ethnological report. 

 Some quantitative guide to the differences in patterns 

 and trends in food preferences as between the 

 Mochero and jomsfero groups was needed, and the 

 procedure used was the best that seemed available 

 under the circumstances. A more accurate statistical 

 study of these cultural phases of the food problem, 

 as well as of nutritional phases, could certainly be 

 obtained in Moche if one had the time to pursue 

 such questions exclusively for a period of months. 



Except for the fact that children do not drink 

 chiclm as much as adults, and that children do drink 

 milk, which adults disdain, the differences between 

 the meals of school children and their parents are 

 negligible. The three main meals, dcsayuno (break- 

 fast), almucrzo (midday meal), and comida (eve- 

 ning meal) are eaten in the same house and "from 

 the same pot" as the parents' food, and there is no 

 pattern of preparing separate diets for the children 

 of the age range of our subjects. The after-school 

 lunch (lonclic), on the other hand, may involve a 

 few centavos' worth of sweets or bread purchased 

 at a shop on the way home from school, a feature 

 which would not appear in the adult menu of the 

 day. Except for lonche, then, we may consider these 

 reports as reflecting the menus of adults as well as 

 children. 



If the limitations of the tabulations have been suffi- 

 ciently well set forth, we may proceed to consider 

 briefly a few points of significance which seem to 

 emerge from the material. 



The total sample consists of 111 pupils, of whom 

 S3, or 74.8 percent, were Mocheros and 28, or 25.2 

 [icrcent, were forasteros. In the Mochero group, 59 

 were boys and 24 were girls ; among the forasteros, 

 IS were boys and 10 were girls. The age range was 8 

 lo 16. Altogether, the reports covered 789 separate 

 meals of Mocheros and 305 separate meals of foras- 

 h'rns over a period of 3 days. 



Summing up all of the items of food consumed 

 which were reported fc^r all of these meals, we find 

 that the Mocheros consumed 2,451 items and the 

 jorostcros 1,171. It thus appears that the forasteros 

 had more variety in their menus, for they had an 

 average of 3.83 items per meal in comparison with the 

 Mocheros' 3.10 items, or 23.5 percent more variety. 



Now let us Consider the incidence of food items, 

 grouped into broad categories. In table 6, columns 

 1 and 4 show the absolute frecjuency of food items by 

 category, for Mocheros and forasteros, respectively. 

 In columns 2 and 5 these frequencies are expressed 

 as percentages of the total number of meals. Thus, 

 for example, the Mocheros reported 789 meals, and 

 therefore had that many oi^portunities to report items 

 from any one of the categories, but actually only 51.8 

 percent of the meals contained beverages, according 

 to the reports, whereas in the case of the jorastcros 

 82.6 percent of the meals reported contained bev- 

 erages. If we divide 51.8 into 82.6, we obtain 1.556. 

 On this basis, then, forastcro meals contain beverages 

 55.6 percent more frequently than Mochero meals. 

 In fact, the forasteros lead in all categories except 

 meat and fish. They have 27.4 percent more soups 

 [ler meal, 16.9 percent more vegetables and grains, 

 1 15.9 percent more fruits, 115.9 percent more sweets, 

 and 119.0 percent more miscellaneous dishes. The 

 Mocheros. on the other hand, enjoy 22.1 percent more 

 meats per meal than the forasteros. Although the 

 forasteros seem to have greater variety of foods per 

 meal, they do trail slightly in the total number of 

 distinguishable menu items reported. Thus a count 

 of the items in tables 4 and 5 respectively demon- 

 strates that the total forastero group reported 65 

 different menu items, whereas the Mocheros reported 

 69. The total range is governed by availability in 

 market, garden, and field, and is about equal for both 

 groups. The significant dift'erence lies in the fact 

 that the average forastcro meal presents more types 

 of food on the table or in the plate, than does the 

 average Mochero meal. Also, the chances of a food 

 item from a given category turning up in a given meal 



