Adapting and testing of the Quality Index of the Food Security Coordination (IQ COSAN) for evaluating menus in university restaurants

• Autor(a) principal: Trivinho, Amanda Nunes Barbosa
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Outros Autores: Martins, Carla Adriano
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/san/article/view/8667535
• topic: Menu planning; Restaurants; Quality improvement; Food guide; Planejamento de cardápio; Restaurantes; Melhoria da qualidade; Guias alimentares; Planificación del menú; Restaurantes; Mejora de calidad; Guías alimentarias

Introduction: University restaurants (RUs) play a crucial role in providing healthy meals to students. Evaluating the menus of RUs is an important step in the meal production process. Objective: To adapt and test the Food Safety Coordination Quality Index (IQ COSAN) to evaluate menus at RUs according to the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population (GAPB). Methods: The IQ COSAN - a tool for qualitative evaluation of school menus - was adapted to consider the classification of foods adopted by the GAPB and the specificities of the menus prepared in RUs. The index was tested by applying it to a sample of weekly menus from RUs of ten Brazilian public universities (two per region). Results: The Adapted IQ COSAN maintained the assessment of the daily offer of food groups and the weekly offer of dietary diversity, regional foods, and socio-biodiversity. As a differentiator, it considers the degree of food processing, the daily offer of vegetarian preparations, and the final score and classification from 0 to 100 points. Most of the tested menus were classified as "needs improvement"; the difference in means between the two forms of application (lunch and dinner together; or separately) was not statistically significant. Conclusion: The Adapted IQ COSAN is easy to apply and makes it possible to analyse lunch and dinner meals together or separately. Further evaluation of the Adapted IQ COSAN is planned given the tool's potential to instrumentalise students and professionals in developing and monitoring menus aligned with the GAPB recommendations.