AVALIAÇÃO DA COMPOSIÇÃO NUTRICIONAL E ACEITABILIDADE DA ALIMENTAÇÃO ESCOLAR.

The National School Feeding Program (NSFP) aims complementing the student's feeding to improve his nutritional conditions and his learning capacity, besides educating with good eating habits. This present study intentioned evaluating the nutritional composing adequacy of menus for NSFP and the provisions' acceptability offered at a municipal school in São José do Calçado - ES. It was adopted the direct weighting to obtain the provisions' per capita offered in the mornings during five consecutive days for students cursing from the 1st to the 5th scholar year. The nutritional composing evaluation was held according to what was established by the program, in such a way to provide at least 20% of the daily nutritional necessities for the students. It was used a facial hedonics scale of five points to verify the acceptance on the food served. The average of proteins, iron and zinc of the menu were much higher than the recommended by the program. By contrast, the vitamin A, vitamin C and calcium averages were well below the amounts tabled by NSFP. The acceptance rate on the meals was of 75%. It was concluded that the feeding given at this analyzed school was not appropriate to major nutritional request based by NSFP and the meals' acceptability reported a lower rate compared to the baseline set on Brazilian legislation, what emphasizes an urge for food systematic monitoring - which is offered at school to assure that the served foods become more attractive and may guarantee proper quantities of nutrients to students' growth and evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]