Introduction:

There is a great interest to know the menu that is served in the school canteens since children that eat their main food there have increased. Different methods have been used to evaluate the school menus, but they do not allow knowing what really the students consume. The aims are to know the acceptance of the menus offered by the school canteen and to detect the least consumed foods.

Material and Methods:

There were evaluated 320 trays from a class of 3rd of primary education. There was performed visual estimation of waste on the trays using the Comstock method by a trained nutritionist.

Results:

The average in the estimation of waste according to the Comstock scale was 1.12 (28% of waste; 25.25% for boys and 30.25% for girls; p<0.05). 17.2% of the trays did not contain waste, 58.4% contained between 1-25% of waste, 19.7% between 26-50% of waste, and 4.7% contained between 51-100% of waste. The most common wastes in the trays were vegetables (24.1%), salad (22.5%) and pulses (21.6%). Egg and yogurt were not found as waste. The main waste were pulses (38.5%; 1.54 in the scale Comstock). Girls leave more vegetables in the plate.

Conclusions:

Menus offered at the school canteen are accepted by the students since 75.6% of the trays contain ≤25% of waste. Vegetables are the most prevailing waste on the trays and pulses are those which leave in more quantity.

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