Assessing nutritional compliance, plate waste and menu acceptability in Spanish school meal programmes (ANPAS-Sp):...

Area of Science:

• Public Health Nutrition
• Food Service Management
• Sustainable Food Systems

Background:

• Implementing healthy, sustainable school menus faces challenges due to inconsistent evidence and lack of validated protocols.
• Existing methods struggle to correlate nutritional standards with objective consumption and waste data.
• A standardized approach is needed to ensure nutritional compliance, student acceptability, and waste reduction in school meal programs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and present a comprehensive, explanatory sequential mixed-methods protocol (ANPAS-Sp) for evaluating school menus.
• To establish a standardized framework for correlating nutritional compliance, plate waste, and student acceptability.
• To facilitate evidence-based interventions for advancing sustainable school food systems.

Main Methods:

• Phase 1: Systematic nutritional audit aligned with Spanish and Catalan regulations.
• Phase 2: High-precision direct weighing of plate waste and validated facial hedonic scales for acceptability.
• Phase 3: Targeted focus groups to qualitatively explore food rejection patterns.

Main Results:

• The ANPAS-Sp protocol integrates quantitative and qualitative data for a holistic evaluation.
• It empirically correlates nutritional recommendations, plate waste quantification, and student meal acceptability.
• The protocol provides a benchmark for gathering integrated evidence on school meal programs.

Conclusions:

• The ANPAS-Sp protocol offers a scientific framework to optimize school meal programs.
• It provides tools to transform school meals into healthy, accepted, and zero-waste systems.
• This approach advances public health policies and promotes sustainable school food systems.