Table 5 Category: Reasons for changes in food practices according to the Inga grandmothers

Availability of time and practicality of cooking for the mothers

To make preparing foods easier:

- Gas is used instead of wood

- No peeling, no grinding

- Foods that are quick and easy to prepare.

“The youth of today is lazy. They replace corn with pasta (laughs), they’d rather cook noodles and not grind corn or wheat”. (Grandmother 66 years-2 sons-3 grandsons)

“They don’t want to peel mote (boiled grain) or cook because they see that everything is about going to buy at the market and that’s it. They buy Promasa (brand of corn dough that is ground and packaged) for the daughter-in-law. Grind? Her? She says that’s hard…” (Grandmother 65 years-6 sons-6 grandsons)

Children’s food preferences

Foods and attractive preparations:

- “Tiendas”, particularly “junk” food, as fried potatoes, candies, or cookies.

- Daycare, schools and/or government programs offer rice, juice, meat, eggs, and a variety of preparations

“Nowadays, for them the food at daycare is better, well, they say they have meat there, they have eggs, juice, fruits, everything. But at home there isn’t any of that. They don’t want to eat the foods that used to be eaten anymore.” (Grandmother 74 years-12 sons-10 grandsons)

Changes in the environment

Consumption and food preparation practices have changed because:

- the presence of “tiendas”

- the availability of money from poppy crops and the extraction of wood

- loss of interest in planting crops

- preference for better-paying crops

- factors that have affected the soil

“…before there were those illegal crops, there was a lot of food, all kinds, even the elderly ate well (laughs). So the kids learned to eat that way. Now, these days, they no longer want to eat the food that there is, our food, “fierita” food as they say…” (Grandmother 59 years-4 sons-5 grandsons)

“We had a nice plot for planting…We knew how to plant beets, carrots, cilantro…Everything was planted, cabbage, collard greens, and now, they went down there to kill off the coffee, they felled where we used to plant. We’re on the border here, it’s not possible to plant crops” (Grandmother 66 years-2 sons-3 grandsons)