Qualitative evaluation of a sample of preschool menus in the region of Alenquer
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25746/ruiips.v11.i3.32472Keywords:
Children, Menus, QualityAbstract
Introduction: Early childhood is a sensitive period for development, and in particular for healthy eating habits. Entities that provide the service of preparing the menus for planning and supplying school meals, must guarantee safe, nutritionally adequate, balanced, varied and complete meals, not neglecting the social, cultural and environmental context. The menus should be varied, seeking to diversify the cooking methods, respecting the rules of healthy cooking. Since children's nutrition is of such importance, it is necessary for schools to be able to provide healthy and nutritious menus and for there to be ways of being able to assess whether the menus are being prepared correctly, with everything that children need. The evaluation of the quality of the menus can be done in quantitative terms, in which the macro and micronutrients of the foods that make up the meals are accounted for, and qualitatively.
Objective: This work aimed to carry out a qualitative assessment of a sample of 56 menus (randomly chosen) of pre-school education in the region of Alenquer, for children from their first year of life to 5 years old.
Methodology: This evaluation was carried out based on the criteria proposed by Bessa et al. in 2009.
Results: As a whole, the evaluated menus obtained a “Good” evaluation (as defined in the criteria used) with a result of 76% of the qualitative score obtained (maximum 100%), which indicates that they are being respected in general. the criteria considered necessary for balanced menus to be considered.
Conclusion: The sample of pre-school education menus in the region of Alenquer analyzed show a good classification from a qualitative point of view, however, there are still several aspects that can be improved. The fact that the evaluated menus are from a group supervised by a Private Institution of Social Solidarity means that these results cannot be extrapolated to the entire reality of the municipality of Alenquer.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Maria Paula Alves, Paula Pinto, Rui Jorge
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors publishing in this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the article simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License that allows sharing of the work with acknowledgement of authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted to enter into additional contracts separately for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in this journal (e.g., publish in an institutional repository or as a book chapter), with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors have permission and are encouraged to publish and distribute their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their personal webpage) at any point before or during the editorial process, as this may generate productive changes, as well as increase the impact and citation of the published work.
