School lunches from the education network will gain new training space | Niterói

The news was announced by the Secretary of Education and president of the Municipal Education Foundation, Bira Marques, this Friday (26), during training with professionals on conscious eating. “We have been doing important work with PROCozinha, acquiring new utensils and renovating school kitchens. Training is another important chapter. We are preparing this space dedicated to lunch ladies in Barreto, so that more professionals have the opportunity to participate in training, to acquire more knowledge and further improve their work”, she highlighted.

The extension course, promoted in partnership with the Brasil Consciente Food (ACB) program, was offered to lunch ladies from the Niterói Municipal Education Network, and covered topics such as healthy eating, the importance of nutrients in children’s development, identifying the balance of meals, among other fundamental points for the school kitchen routine and student meals.

During the meeting, the speakers gave guidance on preparing food and taught recipes that could be replicated in everyday school life, to reduce resistance to foods of plant origin on the part of children and young people. In this sense, one of the measures adopted by the Network was the creation of Conscious Eating Day, every Wednesday, when proteins that are not of animal origin are offered.

Niterói Education has been developing the program for five years. During this period, recipes such as chickpea stroganoff, nutritious feijoada, lentil bolognese and smoothies with different fresh vegetables and fruits were implemented.

According to the Secretary of Education and president of the Municipal Education Foundation, school feeding is part of the pedagogical practice developed in the Municipal Network. “Niterói is a reference in school feeding and a pioneer in initiatives like this, which promote healthier eating, rich in nutrients, as well as nutritional and environmental education. We invest more than R$54 million per year in school meals, with more than 200 menus prepared by a team of nutritionists, prioritizing fresh and minimally processed foods, also including family farming. These are habits that, in addition to promoting healthier development, reverberate within the families themselves”, highlighted Bira Marques.

With vegetable-based recipes, greater consumption of legumes, fruits, and vegetables by students is encouraged, contributing to the construction of healthy eating habits and ensuring students’ access to a greater diversity of foods.

For nutritionist Bruna Nascimento, who is also a specialist in food policies at ACB, this is collective work, and the participation of school lunch ladies in introducing food to children’s palates is essential. “I travel around Brazil visiting schools and giving training. I always say how much Niterói stands out in school nutrition. We are here to provide training to these professionals, so that they can increasingly develop foods of plant origin in the school menus of their respective units. It is important to make recipes with varied ingredients. For the healthy eating day to be maintained in the long term, higher quality recipes need to be developed”, stated Bruna Nascimento.

To further encourage healthy habits, some substitution tips were given to professionals, such as milk, a food rich in calcium, which can be replaced with spinach, broccoli or kale.

Lunch lady Simone da Silva, who works at Escola Municipal Sebastiana Gonçalves Pinho, in Viçoso Jardim, considered the training important to improve the work carried out in school kitchens. “It was great to be here, because we ended up reviewing recipes that we had already learned and that, as time goes by, we improve and remember some tricks”, said Simone da Silva.

Mains Feeding

Educação Niterói, in partnership with the NGO Mercy For Animals, participates in the Brasil Consciente Food (ACB) program, which aims to promote nutritional and environmental education and encourage sustainable and healthy eating habits. For the work carried out, in 2017 the city received the international Conscientious Eating seal for the healthy menus offered in the chain’s units.

Schools in Niterói have more than 200 menus prepared throughout the year. In addition to the menus that meet the criteria of harvest, age group and teaching modality, others are designed exclusively for children who have special dietary needs. More than 100 fresh and minimally processed food items are served, of which more than 60 are fruits and vegetables and many come from Family Farming. Every month, the Niterói Education Network purchases more than 22 thousand kilos of rice (parboiled, polished and wholemeal), more than 16 thousand kilos of beans (black, white and carioca) and 59 thousand kilos of meat (beef, chicken, pork and fish). In total, two to four meals are offered to students: breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner.