Have you ever heard someone ask: “What’s the mistura today?”
If you grew up in São Paulo, Minas Gerais, or many other regions of Brazil, that phrase probably sounds familiar. Mistura is how millions of families refer to the protein part of the meal that goes with rice and beans: meat, egg, chicken, fish… it doesn’t matter which one.
But is this word just a popular custom, or does it carry something deeper?
What the word reveals
The origin of mistura is not as innocent as it seems. It comes from the verb misturar (to mix), but in slaveholding Brazil it gained a very specific meaning: to designate that small piece of protein — often scarce, sometimes almost absent — that accompanied the enslaved people’s meals.
While the base was flour, corn, or beans, meat or fish appeared rarely, almost like a luxury. It was not the main dish, just a “complement.” And so the word mistura was born, marked by scarcity.
When language stores history
Words are not neutral: they carry collective memories. When we keep calling any protein mistura, without naming whether it’s chicken, beef, fish, or egg, language echoes that heritage of lack.
Pierre Bourdieu once said that linguistic choices are forms of power. In other words: saying mistura instead of “beef steak,” “fish fillet,” or “fried egg” is not just word economy — it’s also keeping alive a worldview where variety does not matter.
The impact on today’s meals
And why does this matter in 2025, when Brazil has supposedly advanced in the fight against hunger? Because we still live in a country of contrasts.
IBGE reports that more than a quarter of Brazilian families face some degree of food insecurity. Children still suffer from anemia and vitamin A deficiency. And in poorer neighborhoods, the consumption of ultra-processed foods is rising, making nutrition even worse.
In this context, calling everything mistura helps normalize a monotonous, low-quality diet.
Naming as resistance
If eating is also a cultural act, then naming what we eat is a political one. Saying “we have chicken stew” instead of just “there’s mistura” means recognizing specificity, giving value, seeing the detail.
Paulo Freire taught us: awareness begins with naming the world clearly. And this also applies to the plate. The more we learn to differentiate, the more we learn to question — not just food, but also political, religious, and media discourses we “consume.”
Possible pathways
What if we started changing this habit? Some simple ideas:
- Community workshops in schools and cultural centers, teaching both recipes and the vocabulary of food;
- Portuguese and science teachers working together to link food vocabulary and nutrition;
- Street markets and fairs with clear labeling of meats, fish, and vegetables;
- Cultural campaigns showing the richness of calling food by its proper name.
It may seem small, but naming with precision is a gesture of citizenship. It means transforming a custom inherited from slavery into critical awareness.
Food for thought
In the end, no one orders a pastel de mistura. No one goes to a barbecue restaurant and asks for a “skewer of mistura.” We only use this word when scarcity is still present.
Changing the word alone won’t transform society. But it can be a starting point: a reminder that freedom and dignity begin in the details — even in the way we speak about what feeds us.
👉 What about you? At home, do people still say mistura? Had you ever thought about the historical weight of this word?
Download or Read more here:
BATISTA, D. J. (2025). The Bitter Taste of Mistura: Legacies of Slavery at the Brazilian Table in 2025. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16886384
BATISTA, D. J. (2025). O gosto amargo da Mistura: Heranças da escravidão na mesa brasileira em 2025. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16886344