Some notes about nutrition at Praia,Cape Verde

The authors have studied the data relating to a 24 hours pilot inquiry carried out at 49 rural families from the Administrative Community of Praia, Santiago Island. Cape Verde. Their aims were: 1) to know about the consum-ed food; 2) to search out, in quality and quantity, the consumption in calories, proteins and other nutrients; 3) to define the level of satisfaction of the nutritional needs of the mentioned group. The discussion of the results stated the main conclusions: the group of nutriments mostly consumed was the fourth one which is composed by foods rich in carbohydrates and proteins of low valua. In this group the four most important nutriments are: maize, wheat, rice and bean, which represent around 66% of the total weight of them. An acceptable level of satisfaction of the individual average needs per family is achieved for proteins (although the consumption of proteins of vegetable origin is much more important than the consumption of animal proteins), for vitamins B₁ and C and iron. Considering calories and other nutrients (vitamins A, B₂ and PP, and calcium) there are some shortages. The individual average values per family obtained and those recommended by FAO/OMS showed significant differences for calories and nutrients (test ≪t≫ of Student).