The white-headed capuchin is an omnivore. Its primary foods are fruit and insects. It forages at all levels of the forest, and also forages on the ground. Methods for finding food include stripping bark off of trees, searching through leaf litter, breaking dead tree branches, rolling over rocks, and using stones as anvils to crack hard fruits. Its prehensile tail assists with feeding, helping support the monkey when foraging for food below the branches.