Gastric cancer still constitutes an important public health problem in the state of Pará, Brazil, where mortality rates are above the Brazilian average rates. The historical basis of occupation of the Amazon region, as well as the social-economic relations established during this process, have marked the dietary patterns of this state. The aim of this work is to reconstruct some of the main characteristics of the dietary pattern of the population of Pará in the last century. We sought to identify all the scientific papers that contained data on the dietary habits of the population of Pará during the XX Century. This material allowed us to characterize the eating pattern of this population during the XX Century which included an elevated consumption of salt, used to preserve meats and seafood, a relatively low and irregular consumption of legumes and leaves and an important consumption of carbohydrates with the cassava flour being the main source and frequently containing dyestuffs. This dietary pattern, probably common to other regions of the Amazon, can be characterized as potentially supportive of certain conditions associated with gastric carcinogenesis. In this sense it could have contributed, at least partially, to the high mortality rates from this neoplasia in the Amazon region of Brazil.
diet; manihot flour; stomach neoplasms; salt
