This study aimed to understand the meanings given to speech in the social field about food and nutrition by children's household caregivers. It was an ethnographic study in an urban context with low level population. In the city of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, along a year (2010), observation and semi-structured interviews with household caregivers were conducted, according to the meaning interpretation method. The meanings about food and nutrition that emerged were related to risks in a perspective of scientific speech; food image was strongly associated with technological process present in daily feeding. However, it was not a standard in the social groups observed, considering the reference on which rests that meaning.
risk-taking; alimentation; dietary practices