System of planning and evaluation of school meals

Rocha, Ada; Afonso, Cláudia; Santos, Maria Cristina J.; Morais, Cecília; Franchini, Bela; Chilro, Rui

doi:10.1017/s1368980013001961

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Meals offered at school canteens are generally nutritionally adequate and consistent with dietary guidelines ( 1 , 2 ) . The school lunch plays an important role in the diet of schoolchildren and may provide several benefits in terms of children’s health, well-being, academic achievement and the reduction of risk factors for some chronic diseases in later life ( 3 ) .…”

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confidence: 99%

Strategies to reduce plate waste in primary schools – experimental evaluation

Martins

Rodrigues

Cunha

et al. 2015

Public Health Nutr.

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Objective: To determine and compare the effect of two interventions in reducing the plate waste of school lunches. Design: A between-group analysis was conducted among children from three primary schools: (i) a group receiving intervention A, designed for children and focusing on nutrition education and food waste; (ii) a group receiving intervention B, intended for teachers and focusing on the causes and consequences of food waste; and (iii) a control group with no intervention. For each child, physical weighing of individual meals and leftovers was performed on three non-consecutive weeks at baseline (T0), 1 week (T1, short term) and 3 months (T2, medium term) following the intervention. Plate waste was recorded for a total of 1742 lunches during 14 d over eight different menus. Setting: Portuguese public primary schools in the city of Porto. Subjects: All fourth-grade children (n 212) attending the three preselected schools. Results: After intervention A focusing on nutrition education designed for children, a decrease in soup waste was observed compared with the control group. The effect was greater at T1 (−11·9 (SE 2·8) %; P < 0·001) than at T2 (−5·8 (SE 4·4) %; P = 0·103). The plate waste of identical main dishes decreased strongly at T1 (−33·9 (SE 4·8) %; P < 0·001). However, this effect was not found at T2 (−13·7 (SE 3·2) %; P < 0·001). After intervention B involving teachers, plate waste decreased at T2 (−5·5 (SE 1·9) % for soup; −5·4 (SE 2·4) % for identical main dishes). Conclusions: Nutrition education designed for children was more effective in the short than the medium term. Thus, this kind of intervention was not effective in reducing food waste in the medium term. In contrast, an intervention focusing on teachers revealed better results in the medium term than in the short term.

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confidence: 99%

Strategies to reduce plate waste in primary schools – experimental evaluation

Martins

Rodrigues

Cunha

et al. 2015

Public Health Nutr.

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“…While community-based programs designed to improve the nutritional quality of school meals have been shown to be effective previously [43,44], EM was one of the first programs in Portugal to address qualitative and nutritional laboratory analysis together. Through a multidisciplinary approach targeting the school food environment, a key objective of the program was to improve the nutritional composition of school meals served to young people during lunchtime.…”

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confidence: 99%

Salt Reduction Strategies in Portuguese School Meals, from Pre-School to Secondary Education—The Eat Mediterranean Program

et al. 2020

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High sodium (salt) consumption is associated with an increased risk of developing non-communicable diseases. However, in most European countries, Portugal included, sodium intake is still high. This study aimed to assess the sodium content of school meals before and after the Eat Mediterranean (EM) intervention—a community-based program to identify and correct nutritional deviations through the implementation of new school menus and through schools’ food handlers training. EM (2015–2017) was developed in 25 schools (pre to secondary education) of two Portuguese Municipalities, reaching students aged 3–21 years old. Samples of the complete meals (soup + main course + bread) from all schools were collected, and nutritional quality and laboratory analysis were performed to determine their nutritional composition, including sodium content. Overall, there was a significant decrease (−23%) in the mean sodium content of the complete school meals, which was mainly achieved by the significant reduction of 34% of sodium content per serving portion of soup. In conclusion, EM had a positive effect on the improvement of the school meals’ sodium content, among the participant schools. Furthermore, school setting might be ideal for nutrition literacy interventions among children, for flavors shaping, and for educating towards less salty food acceptance.

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“…Of all the applications analysed, SPARE [41] is perhaps the most similar tool when compared to SCHOOLTHY, since it was specifically designed having in mind school meal plans. It considers national and international nutritional recommendations to evaluate meal plans for Portuguese schools.…”

Section: Related Softwarementioning

confidence: 99%

SCHOOLTHY: Automatic Menu Planner for Healthy and Balanced School Meals

et al. 2020

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SCHOOLTHY: Automatic Menu Planner for Healthy and Balanced School Meals is a decision support tool that addresses the multi-objective menu planning problem in order to automatically produce meal plans for school canteens. Malnutrition is a widespread problem nowadays and is particularly serious when it affects children. In our environment, nutrition experts design healthy and balanced meal plans for children manually, which leaves significant room for improvement in terms of convenience and efficiency. SCHOOLTHY is presented herein as a proposal to improve and facilitate the work of these professionals. We focus on offering healthy and balanced meal plans that not only satisfy the recommended energy and nutrient intakes, but that also have a minimum cost and maximum variety of courses and food groups. Quantitative analyses that compare the meal plans yielded by SCHOOLTHY for meal plans designed by experts at hand and served in regional schools demonstrate the suitability of the proposal. Finally, we note that, thanks to its flexibility, SCHOOLTHY might be easily adapted to deal with other environments, such as hospitals, prisons and retirement homes, among others.

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System of planning and evaluation of school meals

Cited by 7 publications

References 11 publications

Strategies to reduce plate waste in primary schools – experimental evaluation

Strategies to reduce plate waste in primary schools – experimental evaluation

Salt Reduction Strategies in Portuguese School Meals, from Pre-School to Secondary Education—The Eat Mediterranean Program

SCHOOLTHY: Automatic Menu Planner for Healthy and Balanced School Meals

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