Avaliação da produção de refeições em restaurantes institucionais de ensino sob a ótica sustentável

Abstract

The production of meals in institutional restaurants covers different approaches, especially in a current scenario of complex relationship between food and climate change, water scarcity, social and economic inequality and the incidence of morbidities in the world population. This research aims to evaluate Institutional Education Restaurants (IER) of the federal public sphere from the perspective of Sustainable Nutrition, including the economic, social, environmental and health dimensions. This study was characterized as descriptive/cross-sectional, carried out in six IER from November 2018 to September 2019. The analysis consisted of evaluating acquisition foodstuffs as well as the menu served during 1 (one) month in each educational institution. The acquired foodstuffs were investigated from the perspective of their origin – place of production; financial investment by degree of processing – based on food guideline national; nutritional profile – according to the parameters of the Pan American Health Organization and presence of genetically modified organisms in order to address the socioeconomic, environmental and health dimensions. The menu was subject to environmental and health evaluation through the assessment of Water Footprint (WF) and Nutritional Composition of the meal offered. The results of the present research showed that 31.6% of the acquired foodstuffs were of national origin; 29.0% of local origin; 24.4% of regional origin; 14.3% state and only 0.8% of international origin. Higher average percentage of financial was spent in “fresh or minimally processed foods” (73.4%), followed by “processed” (11.9%), “ultraprocessed” (10.8%) and “seasoning/culinary ingredients” (2.2%). Sodium excess was observed in 60.8%, Saturated Fat (46.9%), Total Fat (43.6%), Free Sugars (40.1%) and Trans Fat (21.3%). The presence of Sweeteners was observed in 16.2% of the acquired foodstuffs by the institutions. It was found that 9.2% of the purchased foods were transgenic. It was observed that the IER do not exclusively purchase fresh organic foods. Regarding the analysis of the menus, Water Footprint average of 2165.8 Liters was observed, which provided an average energy value of 834.6kcal, protein 51.8g, carbohydrate 100.2g, total fat 25.2g, fiber 11.5g and sodium 1289.6mg. The IER showed a higher acquisition of food with national origin, high financial investment in “fresh or minimally processed” foods, there was considerable purchases of “processed” and “ultra-processed” foods in which they have direct implications on the frequency of foodstuffs with excess sodium, saturated fat, total fat, Free sugars, trans fat and sweeteners. The data obtained in the present research show that food acquisition and menu development in the IER are directly related to the dimensions that involve sustainable nutrition.