Nutritional Quality and Modification of School Lunch in Pre-school age At Chun Municipal Children Development Center, Phayao province

Abstract

Pre-school children development center of Chun municipality, Phayao is a care center of pre-school age for child development and growth. Nutritional quality of school lunch management is importance for good nutritional status in children. The purpose of research is to analyze the nutritional quality and modify nutrients of school lunch and snacks suitable for pre-school age. The cross-sectional study was conducted in March to April 2018. The colleagues collected school lunch samples (main dishes and snack) in serving size. Then, school lunch samples were analyzed the nutritional values with nutritional analysis program (INMUCAL program) and organized into nutritional quality groups of main dishes and snack dishes according to nutrition profile in each day. Low nutritional quality (Grad C) of school lunches was modified the ingredients for improve nutritional quality. The results revealed school lunch 34 items (main dishes 17 items and snack 17 items) had average energy 486.0±76.8 kcal, and energy distribution of carbohydrates, proteins, and fat was 60.5%, 13.5%, and 25.9% of total energy, respectively. Meanwhile, other nutrients met the recommendation criteria except calcium below recommended levels. In addition, the calcium content had a statistically significant difference at p value< 0.05. For nutritional quality of school lunch could be classified as main dishes in grade A, B, C as 47.1%, 29.4%, 23.5%, respectively and snacks in grad A, B, C as 52.9%, 41.1%, 6.0%, respectively.  After that, school lunches of group C 5 items were modified to improve nutritional quality and obtained grad A 3 items and grad B 2 items. Modification of grad C school lunch found that sugar contents had a statistically significant difference at p value<0.05. Therefore, most school lunches of the Chun municipal child center have nutritional quality and complete nutrition.  These school lunch items will be beneficial to apply in other child development centers for improve nutritional quality of school lunch and to encourage good nutrition in preschool age children.