OBJECTIVE: To assess the association between the consumption of school meals offered by the National School Feeding Program (PNAE, in the Portuguese acronym) and the diet quality of adolescents aged 11 to 19 years from Brazilian public schools.
DESIGN: Cross-sectional.
SETTING: Public schools in Brazil.
PARTICIPANTS: A sample of 12 260 adolescents aged 11 to 19 years from 2015 National School Health Survey. High consumption of PNAE school meals were considered when the adolescents consumed school meals 5 d/week. Food consumption data were obtained from a 7-d FFQ and converted into three diet quality assessment scores, namely (1) consumption of healthy foods; (2) consumption of unhealthy foods and (3) overall diet quality. Crude and adjusted linear regression models were used to test the association between high consumption to school meals (daily consumption) and each diet quality score.
RESULTS: More than one-fifth of the adolescents (21·5 %) reported high consumption of school meals. High consumption of school meals was directly associated with the score of the overall diet quality (adjusted coefficient = 0·18; 95 % CI 0·07, 0·30) and healthy food consumption (adjusted coefficient = 0·42; 95 % CI 0·26, 0·57), and inversely associated with the unhealthy food consumption score (adjusted coefficient = -0·23; 95 % CI -0·35, -0·10).
CONCLUSION: Our results showed that the consumption of PNAE meals may contribute to healthy eating promotion in Brazil.
