Improving the overall sustainability of the school meal chain: the role of portion sizes.

PURPOSE: This work analyses the meal supply in primary schools in Italy to highlight new areas of inefficiency upstream of the food chain, regarding the size of the food portions specified in public tenders. A lack of conformity of food portions can potentially lead to a double negative externality affecting the sustainability of school meals: overweight children and food waste. METHOD: Based on the data contained in the contract between municipalities and school catering services, the analysis was performed on the portion sizes (in grams) of the main food products included in the school menu for each regional capital (RC) in Italy. Data analysis regarded two main aspects: consistency of food portions within regions and adherence to national standards for childrens. RESULTS: The results revealed great discrepancies amongst regions and in several cases, portion sizes significantly larger than the reference values of standard portions for school catering. The study also profiles RC on the basis of portion sizes, school meal attendance, and childhood obesity rates. CONCLUSIONS: School meals have the potential to educate the next generation regarding healthy eating habits, and thus play a leading role in obesity prevention in children. Similarly, the educational role of eating at school can contribute to raising children's awareness about one of the most urgent environmental challenges-food waste-by introducing the best strategies for waste reduction, reuse, and recycling. Results have economic, social, health, and environmental implications and highlight the need to revisit policies to introduce new solutions for more sustainable and healthy school canteens in Italy. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level V, descriptive studies.

Evaluation of DISORDER: Retrospective Image Motion Correction for Volumetric Brain MRI in a Pediatric Setting.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Head motion causes image degradation in brain MR imaging examinations, negatively impacting image quality, especially in pediatric populations. Here, we used a retrospective motion correction technique in children and assessed image quality improvement for 3D MR imaging acquisitions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We prospectively acquired brain MR imaging at 3T using 3D sequences, T1-weighted MPRAGE, T2-weighted TSE, and FLAIR in 32 unsedated children, including 7 with epilepsy (age range, 2-18 years). We implemented a novel motion correction technique through a modification of k-space data acquisition: Distributed and Incoherent Sample Orders for Reconstruction Deblurring by using Encoding Redundancy (DISORDER). For each participant and technique, we obtained 3 reconstructions as acquired (Aq), after DISORDER motion correction (Di), and Di with additional outlier rejection (DiOut). We analyzed 288 images quantitatively, measuring 2 objective no-reference image quality metrics: gradient entropy (GE) and MPRAGE white matter (WM) homogeneity. As a qualitative metric, we presented blinded and randomized images to 2 expert neuroradiologists who scored them for clinical readability. RESULTS: Both image quality metrics improved after motion correction for all modalities, and improvement correlated with the amount of intrascan motion. Neuroradiologists also considered the motion corrected images as of higher quality (Wilcoxon z = -3.164 for MPRAGE; z = -2.066 for TSE; z = -2.645 for FLAIR; all P < .05). CONCLUSIONS: Retrospective image motion correction with DISORDER increased image quality both from an objective and qualitative perspective. In 75% of sessions, at least 1 sequence was improved by this approach, indicating the benefit of this technique in unsedated children for both clinical and research environments.