Educação alimentar e nutricional em ambiente escolar promove melhoria na qualidade do lanche de crianças

Abstract

The objective of the research was to evaluate the impact on the qualitative composition of children's school snack after the intervention of the nutritionist with a Food and Nutrition Education (FNE) program. This was a nonrandomized clinical trial with 26 children aged of 7-9 years old of private school in Governador Valadares-MG, 15 of the experimental group that received nutritional intervention, and 11 of the control group that received no intervention. The school snack of the children of the experimental and control groups was evaluated, in relation to the frequency of consumption in natura, processed and ultra-processed foods, during three nonconsecutive days, before and after the nutritional intervention. The program was based on the current recommendations of the Food Guide for the Brazilian Population, with 8 consecutive meetings, held twice a week, lasting 30 minutes each. T - paired and independent samples were used for comparing the qualitative composition of the snacks of students, intra groups and between groups (experimental and control), respectively, before and after the intervention (α = 5%). In an intragroup analysis, the frequency of consumption of in natura foods (p = 0.0006) and processed (p = 0.01) increased, and ultra-processed (p = 0.0003) decreased only in the experimental group after intervention. There was a reduction in the frequency of consumption of ultra-processed foods (p = 0.03), in the experimental group versus control, after intervention. It is concluded that FNE actions are effective and efficient for impact on children's eating behavior, providing improvement of children's snacks.