Background:

Since the first evaluation in 2011 of the “Healthy Eating and Ecological Production Program in School Meals of Asturias”, the improvement of the menus has been analyzed in terms of frequencies in the food group offer. The objective of this study was to evaluate the culinary quality of the menus, in order to complement this analysis.

Methods:

Transversal descriptive study with a sample for convenience of the 243 Primary Education centers of Asturias, that is, 195 in the 2015-16 academic year.. A monthly menu was requested to all the centers and in case of not receiving a response, a search was made on the Internet. Minimum criteria were defined to comply with frequencies, variety and recipes for each food group. The menus were analyzed every day and the differences between the menus cooked on site vs catering, as well as between public versus private / concerted centers. The data analysis was performed with the SPSS program and the differences between percentages of compliance with the Chi square test.

Results:

195 menus were analyzed (80.2%), obtaining high percentages of compliance in all the criteria (over 80%), except in the variety of carbohydrates (27.7%), fruit (22.1%). %), processed meat (13.9%), vegetable offer as first course (6.1%) and animal protein in the first course (2.6%).

Conclusions:

The general compliance of the recommendations with respect to variety and different recipes in the schools is very adequate, especially in those of public ownership and with own kitchen type.

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