[Planning of the school menu; results of a diet counseling system for the adequacy to the nutritional recommendations].

Introduction: The dietary offer is not always concordant with the nutritional recommendations in the school menus.

Objective: To review the effectiveness of a diet counseling system for collective catering companies that operate in public education centers of Andalusia.

Methods: Cross-sectional, observational, descriptive study. We reviewed and counseled the changes needed in the monthly school menus of the companies operating in 1197 centers throughout the scholar calendar. In case of not meeting the required conditions and before being implemented, the improvement recommendations were sent to the companies.

Results: 78.2% of 209 menus from 21companies did not meet the established criteria and needed adaptations before being implemented. Throughout the scholar calendar, the number of menus needing changes progressively decreased, being 42.9% by the end. The most frequent cause for modification were: insufficient information on the written menu about the foods included in each dish (50,7%), lack of rotation between raw and cooked vegetables (35.4%), insufficient information on the cooking techniques (26.3%), insufficient weekly variety of rice, pasta and potatoes (17.7%), deviation in the energy and nutrients content (16.7%), less than one serving of vegetable per day (15.4%), lack of rotation in the type of fish (14.4%). Finally, 90.9% of the menus revised were approved.

Conclusions: Following of the nutritional recommendations of the school menus is high with the implementation of a counseling system aimed at the dietitians of the companies of collective catering.