[Diet monitoring in primary care]

To find out the dietary habits of a village, and to analyse the variables that relate them to sociocultural, economic and epidemiological factors.

Retrospective analyses of the diet of a random sample of heads of family and family members over 20.

Rural village.

166 families out of a total of 257: i.e. 338 out of 659 adults in the census.

We noticed that 52.4% of the families reported varied diets, 39.7% non-varied and 7.8% mixed. We found that when women were heads of family, the family tended to have a more varied diet (p less than 0.07); that a varied diet predominated in the better-supplied rural centre and that the average number of diagnoses per patient and per year was higher in individuals that reported eating few vegetables (p less than 0.8 women) (p less than 0.04 men).

By investigating dietary habits at the Primary Care stage, using a method of studying the weekly intake of certain foods, it is possible to make social, cultural, economic and epidemiological inferences that could be extremely useful in practice.