Avaliação de cardápios da alimentação escolar em diferentes regiões do Brasil a partir de indicadores de qualidade das refeições: um estudo de revisão.

Abstract

The National School Feeding Program is a State policy that provides by law the right to food in public schools. Being the nutritionist responsible for the elaboration and quality control of the menus offered in the school environment. The present study aimed to analyze the quality of school meals offered by PNAE through quality indicators in different regions of Brazil. To this end, a literature review was carried out in the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), Latin American and Caribbean Literature on Health Sciences (LILACS) and Google Scholar databases. The search for articles was based on the following descriptors: “School food”, “PNAE”, “quality index” and “school menu” for Portuguese and School food”, “PNAE”, “quality index” and “school menu” in the English language. To determine the descriptors and to search for scientific works in the databases, publications in scientific journals, theses, dissertations, course conclusion works, and book chapters were prioritized. Studies published in the last five years were considered. The first stage of selection of the works was carried out through a previous reading of the title and abstract of each article, in this stage 9 article were found. After this initial selection, the second stage took place with the full reading of the studies that underwent screening, excluding publications that did not meet the objectives of this work, totaling 3 articles for the construction of this study. From the results obtained, there was a low supply of foods with high nutritional value, sources of proteins, complex carbohydrates and unsaturated fats. In addition to the high supply of sugars and sodium, characterizing a menu with a high concentration of ultra-processed foods, with low nutritional value. It showed a low content of essential nutrients, insufficient for the physiological needs of students and a high supply of foods harmful to health. In this way, it is concluded that the use of quality indicators to evaluate the school menu is an essential tool to verify the execution of the meals offered by the PNAE.