We report results of a longitudinal study of shifting patterns of food consumption in a rural Hausa‐Fulani village in northern Nigeria. While the broad outlines of diet did not change over the 12 years between two dietary surveys, important shifts occurred: a decline in the consumption of local cultigens, with a corresponding decrease in total caloric intake, as well as an embellishment1 of diet‐through the introduction of new foods. We suggest that this is best understood through the growing participation of this village in the wider economy. We juxtapose these dietary shifts to a model of disease risk that suggests, for the early period, that the coincidence of dietary elaboration and the periodicity of disease risk offered some degree of protection against malaria infection. For the more recent period, diet was no longer marked by conspicuous seasonal changes. To what extent these differences in diet patterns have affected the disease experience of this population is not yet clear.