[Eating behavior and life styles: research and action on nutrition in a rural area]

Nutrition education has sometimes been portrayed as a normative discourse, forgetting that nutrition is at the heart of basic lifestyle habits. In fact, eating not only satisfies a basic need, it is a social and communication action that develops an interaction with a person's socio-economic and cultural framework. This article describes an educational programme that involved all 2,200 inhabitants of a small rural town in the south of France. The purpose of the study was to better define what was involved in the development of eating behaviours in order to adapt information for the population. Two hundred families, 28% of the town, were provided with a survey questionnaire. Questions about socio-economic and cultural data of the families, types of food provisions, cooking initiation, perceived knowledge of dietetics, and ways of sociability were included. This research permitted the identification of different profiles of eaters: working class families, the elderly, families without children, etc... The subsequent information campaign attempted to adapt its message to each category identified, taking into consideration economic and psychosocial factors, the attachment of the population to its culinary patrimony, and the pejorative vision of dietetics perceived by part of the population. The entire community collaborated at each stage of the programme. Conceived as a research project, it contributed to motivating the population to take an active role in the management of its health problems.