This article analyzes the feeding forms and care, in a record made by the nursing friars of the Hospital San Juan de Dios of La Serena in 1796. The food intake of both patients and hospital staff, is examined through a quantitative and qualitative perspective. In this context, it is proposed that food intake, in a monastic space dedicated to the care of the poor and sick, responded to doctrinal elements typical of the Western Catholic tradition, but above all to local economic conditions. It supported the poor who wandered in a city with economic and social growth at the end of the 18th century.