Menu Analysis of the National School Lunch Program : The Comparisons of the Frequency of Menu with the Students' Food Preferences

ABSTRACT

The menu planning is closely tied to the acceptability of the food and the satisfaction of the food service system to its client, therefore national school lunch program(NSLP) menu should consider the food preferences of the students. To provide approgriate information and guidelines about desirable NSLP menu planning, the comparison between the frequency of NSLP menus and food preferences of the students was performed, NSLP menus with cooking method of 776 meals were collected from 10 elementary NSLP schools in Seoul and Kyunggi province, and food preference data was surveyed with 1618 elementary school students from 4 NSLP schools in Korea in 1995. According to the cooking methods, NSLP menus served Kimchi(98.3%), rice(71.4%) and soup(71.1%) frequently. Based on the food groups, NSLP menus served vegetables most frequently(188%), followed by grains(101.4%), milk(100%), meat(57.3%), fruits(50.3%), and so on. By Spearman Rank Correlations analysis, the serving frequencies of vegetable side dishes(r=.33, p=.05) were positively correlated with the students' preference score. According to the cooking method, the serving frequencies of steamed dishes(r=1.0, p=.00), salads(r=1.0, p=.00), Kimchi(r=.85, p=.01) and rice one-dish meal(r=.80, p=.10) were positively correlated with the students' preference score. However, the serving frequencies of the main dishes(r=.13, p=.57) and soup group(r=.15, p=.57) were not significantly correlated with the students' preference score. Even though the serving frequency of fruit were negatively correlated with the students' preference score(r= -.80, p=.10). These results indicated that the NSLP menu planned the vegetable side dishes in accordance with the students' food preferences, but it planned the main dish, soup group, and meat side dish group discordantly. Therefore further efforts are needed to involve the preferred cooking methods for increasing the food acceptability. It could be used for the basic guidelines for menu planning of NSLP, and for the future improvement of NSLP in Korea.