[Knowledge, opinions and attitudes of the Canarian Islands population towards nutrition].

OBJECTIVE: To estimate knowledge and identify opinions and attitudes of the Canary Island population towards eating in relation to health. DESIGN: Epidemiological, cross-sectional descriptive or prevalence study. SUBJECTS: 1747 people from the Canary Islands: 821 males (47%) and 926 females (53%) aged 6 to 75 years. RESULTS: In the Canary Islands, 46.7% of the study population considered their knowledge of food and nutrition to be adequate, although an important percentage of the population didn't know the foods they had to restrict to prevent hypercholesterolemia. 43% of the population studied declared to be ready to modify their diet for health reasons and 78.7% of the people surveyed considered physicians as the most reliable source of food and nutrition information. CONCLUSIONS: An important proportion of the Canarian population considers that they should change their diet to improve their health. Likewise, a large number of this population admits to being ready to positively modify their eating habits, and health professionals are a key element in this process.