Educational institutions (hereafter EI) are an important consumer of food on a national scale, committed to public procurement of food. The purpose of the master's thesis was to gain insight into the public procurement system. We were interested in which extent do EIs take into account any criteria for nutritionally more suitable foods when public procuring, whether there are differences between EIs in procurement of food and their consideration of the nutritional quality of products. We investigated this with the help of a survey on nutrition in EI, conducted by the National Institute of Public Health. We also wanted to check the possibility of using uniform criteria for the selection of nutritionally more suitable products based on the list of ordered products in four different EIs in Slovenia. We classified the products into predefined nutritional groups, looked for nutritional values and compared them with the criteria. Among the requirements of the last public tender of food, EIs mainly took into account the conditions regarding quality schemes (92.5 %, N=535), organic production (83.6 %, N=535) and nutritional adequacy (76.3 % and 68 %, N=535). When implementing school meals, they least often fully follow the recommendations regarding the permissible inclusion of nutritionally poor foods (38.5 %, N=535), and the most recommendations regarding the frequency of inclusion of recommended foods (47 %, N=535). The implementation of the criteria showed that in 8 out of 16 food groups, less than 50 % of the products were suitable for ordering. The majority of the interviewed EIs (74 %, N=535) confirmed that the criteria for more nutritionally suitable foods would be a useful tool in public procurement. Statistically significant differences related to nutritional quality between the type of EI and the inclusion of requirements in the latest public tender were shown in the case of the inclusion of organic production and nutritional adequacy 2, kindergartens included more requirements. Statistically significant differences related to nutritional quality were revealed between smaller and larger EIs in the inclusion of organic production, quality classes, nutritional adequacy 1 and 2. All listed requirements were more often included by larger EIs. Between EIs from three different regions, statistically significant differences were shown in the inclusion of requirements regarding organic production, which was most frequently included by EIs from Western Slovenia (90.9 %, N=77), and least frequently by EIs from Eastern Slovenia (80.1 %, N=292). The use of criteria for nutritionally more suitable foods products seems reasonable, but a multi-sector approach and an organized agro-food chain are needed to create more health-friendly food systems.
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