Objective:

To know opinions of adolescents from Cholul, Yucatán, about Plato del Bien Comer Maya in order to improve it as health promotion tool.

Materials and methods:

Qualitative study, formative research. Three focus groups were carried out, participating 28 adolescents: 12-16 years old. Criteria of inclusion: studying middle school; to have native family from the town. Analysis of the data made manually.

Results:

Comparatively with the national Plato del Bien Comer, the Plato Maya was better identified because have local food products easier to obtain and cheaper. The principal finding was to understand Fruto is a linguistic variation word which represents in Maya context both fruits and vegetables. This might be an important key to improve health promotion activities with that population.

Conclusions:

In order to have better results in nutritional interventions, it is necessary to design educational-communicative strategies in accordance with the local culture.