School Nutrition and Food Education: Recent Trends in Research in Latin America between 2005 and 2021

Abstract

The scientific literature on school feeding allows to rethink food education strategies at school, food provision policies, and programs. The authors carried out the literature review in order to comprehend the limits and scope of school food education and provision in a context where malnutrition represents one of the major problems of the infant-juvenile population in the region. Moreover, a bibliographic survey between 2020-2021 about school feeding in Latin America, published from 2005 to 2021, corresponds to the basis of this article. Thus, the authors identified that school feeding/food education programs seek to modify nutritionist behaviors based on an implicit mechanistic pedagogy that assumes automatic changes from the accumulation of information, in a fragmented curriculum or in specific initiatives such as workshops that parallelize the prescribed curriculum. In addition, the investigators discovered gaps not yet systematically addressed in this article, such as the inclusion of food education in initial teacher training, the articulation of education and food provision with collective food production strategies, as well as the deepening of the gender perspective to understand differentiated learning in the school space. Finally, the surveyed research shows the significance of generating mediations for the development of food-nutritional programs in schools, the implementation at the level of educational management, and the school relationship with families.