Avaliação das boas práticas de manipulação em UAN de escolas municipais localizadas no interior do RN.

Abstract

The National School Meals Program, created in the 1950s, is part of the public policies that act to promote Food and Nutrition Security, and is considered one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world, because it promotes universal service to schoolchildren and guarantees the human right to adequate and healthy food. The objective of this program is to assist in proper growth, development, learning, school performance, and the formation of healthy eating practices, through food and nutritional education actions and the provision of meals that cover the nutritional needs of students. For this, it is of fundamental importance that school meals are microbiologically safe, in order to avoid outbreaks of foodborne diseases in the school environment. The present work aims to evaluate the good handling practices in food and nutrition units of municipal schools located in the interior of RN. This is a cross-sectional observational study conducted during the month of June 2022. The sample was composed of 9 municipal public schools, chosen to contemplate the five areas of the city (north, south, east, west and central). For data collection the "Checklist of good practices for school food and nutrition units" was used, and the statistical analysis was performed using Microsoft Excel. Among the schools analyzed it was found that 88.9% presented a regular health risk situation, and 11.1% are in a situation of low health risk, thus the average percentage of adequacy of school feeding units was 63.61%, being classified as regular health risk. When performing the analysis of the thematic blocks, it was found that the block production processes had the lowest adequacy (45.28%), and the block receiving foodstuffs had the highest adequacy (97.98%). In relation to the zones of the city the results showed that the south zone of the city has the highest rate of adequacy to good practices (64.82%), while the west zone is the zone with the highest sanitary hygiene risk of the city (55.24%).Although the average sanitary risk has been classified as regular, irregularities were found during the production process of the meals that constitute serious risk factors for microbial contamination, which can lead to outbreaks of foodborne diseases. Given this, we conclude that there is a need for improvements in the physical structure and facilities of school kitchens, the development of a manual of good practices, implementation and supervision, as well as the suggestion of constant training with food handlers on good practices, aiming at the correction of erroneous handling practices.