Avaliação nutricional da merenda escolar: potencialização da agricultura familiar como estratégia de enfrentamento à insegurança alimentar.

Abstract

This work focused on presenting an evaluative diagnosis of the food and nutrition conditions of elementary school students in the municipal school network of Pombal – PB, located in the northeastern Sertão of Paraíba. The policy of school lunches provided to students daily was chosen, whose diet offered on the menu is based on the majority of products from local regional family farming. Thus, school meals are an important alternative in enhancing nutritional supply, aiming to overcome food insecurity and keep children and adolescents in the school environment, minimizing dropouts, repetition and withdrawal from continuing their studies. It should be noted that, in Brazil, several policies are adopted that aim to overcome the reality of the stigma of hunger for a significant portion of the population. Studies by the <Observatory of Inequalities= published in 2022, called <Time Machine: Brazil back on the hunger map= reflect the intensity and worsening of the situation in regions, where countless families are below the poverty line. There is a lack of emerging social policies to overcome a serious problem that haunts the population: hunger. Authors point out that the development of family farming can respond to tackling critical points of hunger in the country, especially in regions with the greatest worsening of food insecurity. This study then identified the relevance of family farming in the PNAE based on published studies. In this sense, there are segments of the population that suffer most from hunger, farmers without a source of income, the elderly, children and adolescents, students in public schools. The results indicate that the direct supply of food from local family farming resulted in an increase in the availability of healthy foods on Brazilian school menus that suggest several daily alternatives. In the context of school meals in schools in Pobalense, it was possible to present and reveal the relevant nutritional potential of the local menu. In this research, the menus were interpreted and measured in their nutritional values, aiming to enable school management to enhance them with new necessary nutritional implements, in addition to proposing planning strategies for the acquisition of family farming products and permanent evaluation of the foods daily offered to customers. school, aiming to overcome children’s food insecurity. However, it is concluded that there is a need for permanent revisions to menus, due to the seasonality of regional agricultural production, for better nutritional support that provides adequate nutrients for school performance, growth, human and intellectual development of students. Furthermore, this study proposed the production of AN INSTRUCTIONAL MENU BOOKLET.