Introduction: The relevance of providing healthy nutrition for school-age children, a significant coverage of students with school meals, and an increase in the proportion of children requiring correction of the diet have determined the objective of the study to evaluate school feeding and to substantiate further measures for its improvement. Materials and methods: Twenty-six regulations on school meals adopted from the year 2000 to the present have been analyzed. The study of the eating schedule and the frequency of consumption of certain foodstuffs was carried out based on a survey of 1,975 parents and schoolchildren in grades 5 to 11. The energy value, the content of vitamins and minerals in school breakfasts and home meals of 1,168 fifth graders from the city of Minsk were estimated. Results: The findings show that regulations on school meals have been developed in the republic; dietary nutrition is organized at schools, the material and technical base of school kitchens is constantly being improved, and children are being taught healthy eating skills. At the same time, the analysis of actual nutrition at school and at home indicates malnutrition causing an imbalance in the dietary intake of macro- and micronutrients. Discussion: An effective model of school feeding has been created in the Republic of Belarus. Yet, the current system cannot fully ensure a balanced diet for children. It is therefore important to continue personnel training, monitoring of school meals using modern information technologies, and awareness raising on healthy eating among schoolchildren.

Introduction. The current stage of development of social and hygienic monitoring (SHM) is characterized by the lack of an effective technology for monitoring for the health of the child population, adequate indicators of the monitoring system in the area of hygiene and health protection of children and adolescents. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the effective indicators of the information fund of the SHM. Materials and methods. There was carried out the expert-analytical study including forty four thousand values of 105 indicators of the information fund of the SHM were processed for 8 years and the results of a physiological and hygienic examination of students in 18 schools in the city of Minsk. Results. The database of the information fund of the SHM does not allow establishing the influence of socio-economic factors on the incidence in children and adolescents by the main classes of diseases and socially significant diseases. The data of the forms on the results of instrumental measurements of physical factors, the number of outbreaks of infectious and parasitic diseases in educational institutions, the specific weight of objects of various groups in terms of the level of sanitary and epidemiological well-being correlate no with each other and do not allow objectively characterizing the sanitary and epidemiological state of educational institutions. The indicators of official state statistics, characterizing the socio-economic situation of the regions, do not correlate with the level of sanitary and epidemiological well-being of general education institutions according to laboratory and instrumental control data, and do not reliably affect the coverage of students with hot meals. The socio-economic situation of the regions affects the behavior in the field of nutrition and morbidity in children and adolescents, the management of medical care for them. Limitations. The study was limited to the study and analysis of data from the Federal Information Fund for Social and Hygienic Monitoring and data on the sanitary and epidemiological well-being of schools in a large city. Conclusion. Optimization of the set of indicators and data of the information fund of the SHM for assessing and managing the processes of ensuring the sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the children population and organizations must be carried out by reducing and including additional indicators of the fund.