[Sociocultural factors and nutrition (author's transl)]

A schematic review of some of the most significant sociocultural factors related to food intake throught life, either in developing or developed societies is presented. In both societies, sociocultural factors are of fundamental importance on the determination of feeding practices, thus its excess or deficit are of great relevance to physical growth, possibly mental development as well as on morbidty and mortality. In developing societies low social class and poor education are sinonimous of poor nutrition. However, if the whole population in developed societies are studied, it is proven once again that nutritional deficiencies do also exist among marginal groups of people, which are mainly produced by poor education, erroneous feeding practices, nutritional taboos during health and disease, byas and prejudices. It must follows that in these societies, relative large group of children are poorly fed during the critical periods of growth and development due to sociocultural factors. Only through the appropiate and enforced nutrition educational programs at all learning levels, primarw and higher education, as well as better and more complete nutritional curriculum at Medical and Public Health Schools could perhaps solve, the problem, or at least significant alleviated it. This is the hope.