engleski

Nutritive profiling of lunch meals in primary schools in Zagreb municipality with nutrient rich food 9.3 Index

Introduction: The nutritional value of institutionally organized diets could be determined by its meal components whose selection can be influenced by food procurement policy. Therefore, the aims of this study were to evaluate energy and nutrient density of the planned meals served by schools and to observe the differences between two public sector food procurement (PSFP) models. Materials and methods: Nutritive profiling was made for 10 different lunch meals per school. One week of school lunches was randomly selected during fall/winter and one week during the spring/summer season. The study included 14 primary schools in the area of Zagreb municipality. Eight schools were subject to a public food procurement model which is based on the lowest price (LOW model), while six other schools were additionally buying local, organic and/or family-owned suppliers (LOC model). The nutrient density of each school lunch was estimated by the Nutrient Rich Food 9.3 Index (NRF9.3) and presented as points/100 kcal. Energy density was presented as the energy value per gram of meal. Lunch meals were grouped in 6 categories according to the main component (stews, risotto, pasta, fish dishes, meat dishes, and “other”). Results: Based on NRF9.3 scores, stews (28.73) and “other” (55.08) food category emerged as the most nutrient-dense lunch meals in LOW and LOC models, respectively. There were no significant differences (p=0.791) between the two models regarding energy density (1.90 ± 0.07 kcal/g and 1.86 ± 0.06 kcal/g, for LOC and LOW, respectively). However, the average NRF9.3 score in the LOC school model (11.56 ± 1.43 points/100kcal) was significantly lower (p=0.003) than in the LOW model (18.79 ± 1.68 points/100kcal). No significant difference between the two models was observed when grouping the meals in 6 categories for energy density, but some difference was found regarding nutrient density of stew and meat dishes. Conclusion: The overall nutritional quality of the school lunch is poor ; hence the recipes should be revised to achieve more energy and nutrient dense lunches. It seems that the type of PSFP model could affect nutrient density. However, these differences are the result of different menu design between the schools and not the model itself.

school lunches ; nutritive density ; energy density ; public sector food procurement models

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