Abstract
Objective: To analyze the relationship between food waste from school lunches and nutrient intake in elementary school children.
Methods: We administered a self-assessment questionnaire about food waste from school lunches to 112 fifth- and sixth-grade students at an elementary school in Tokyo and weighed the food wasted by each child on 2 days each in May and June 2009. The total number of data was used for analysis. The children were divided into 2 groups according to the percentage of school lunch food wasted: “completely eaten” and “not completely eaten”. Nutrient intake was compared between the 2 groups using the generalized estimating equation. We analyzed the intake of energy, protein, fat, carbohydrate, 5 minerals, 4 vitamins and food fiber.
Results: Data collected from total 218 students (104 boys [47.7%], 114 girls [52.3%]) were analyzed. The “not completely eaten” group included 80 students (36.7%) and the “completely eaten” group included 138 (63.3%) students. The percentage of food waste from school lunches ranged from 0.2% to 84.3%. The median (25th percentile, 75th percentile) energy and nutrient intake in the “not completely eaten” and “completely eaten” groups were as follows: energy, 562 (435, 658) kcal vs. 715 (699, 715) kcal (p < 0.001) and vitamin C, 26 (16, 35) mg vs. 41 (41, 47) mg (p < 0.001). Similarly, the intake of all other nutrients differed significantly between the 2 groups (p < 0.001).
Conclusion: Except for the vitamin C, the nutrient intakes in the “not completely eaten” group were 20~30% lower, and the vitamin C intake was 40% lower than that in the “completely eaten” group.
