Background:

food education constitutes a social requirement that shows the need for its inclusion in school curricula from the first educational levels and its contextualization in comprehensive medical care from primary health care.

Objective:

to analyze the presence and the guidelines related to the contents of food education in the curriculum of primary education in Cuba and to diagnose how it is treated in the educational process of this teaching.

Methods:

a descriptive study was carried out from January to June 2019. The empirical method was applied: analysis of documents to the study plan and the leading program of education for health promotion in the national education system; theoretical methods: analytical-synthetic and inductive-deductive to determine their potential for food education; and statistics to process the information.

Results:

potentialities were identified in the primary education study plan for food education as a transversal axis. The most pertinent subjects are: Physical Education, Natural Sciences, Plastic Education, The World We Live In and Spanish Language; while in all grades there are potentialities that guarantee the systematic treatment of the aforementioned contents.

Conclusions:

the primary education study plan is recognized as a fundamental way for food education in schoolchildren. The detected potentials must be considered by teachers to include food education as a transversal axis in the institutional educational project through the subjects and complementary activities.

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