Introduction

: This article analyzes the guidelines on food education and agricultural promotion that circulated in the Revista Educador Sanitario, the official publication of the national health education department ofArgentina during the 1960s.

Development

: The study explores the discursive adaptations by Argentinean sanitarians to the international development guidelines toward promoting the global campaign against "hidden hunger," which referred to the cultural eating patterns of low nutritional quality food. Then, the study examines the dietary prescriptions for popular families that were intended to stimulate quality, variety, and austerity as healthy habits. Finally, it reviews the tensions and contradictions immanent in the scholarly references to agricultural promotion and free trade rules, highlighting food inequities and the lack of infrastructure at the federal level to successfully achieve the desired agri-food modernization.

Conclusions

: The developmentalist disourse on nutritious food appropriated by the Revista were found to be functional to the climate of peronist prescription. Dietary and home economics suggestions attempted to substitute meat consumption for other protein sources such as legumes and dairy products and that of simple carbohydrates for complex ones such as vegetables. However, their links with the promotion of subsistence agro economies refuted the prevalence of "hidden hunger" as a food problem in Argentina. In line with the international parameters, this approach would promote a dynamic of food redistribution to replenish the gaps in the domestic market and stimulate net exports by preventing the erosion of exportable balances.

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