Nutritional quality and acceptability of a weekly vegetarian lunch in primary-school canteens in Ghent, Belgium: 'Thursday Veggie Day'.

OBJECTIVES: To determine the nutritional adequacy and acceptability to children of vegetarian lunches served on 'Thursday Veggie Day' - a public health initiative in Ghent (Belgium) primary schools. DESIGN: A comparison of food leftovers from main courses on regular days and Thursdays was made using a visual plate waste method. The nutritional value of the vegetarian meat analogue and meat components of main courses served on five 'Thursday Veggie Days' and five comparable conventional main courses was evaluated using three criteria (maximum 30 % of energy from fat, maximum of one-third of fat as saturated fat and minimum 1.5 g of dietary fibre per 420 kJ). SETTING: Two canteens from primary schools in Ghent, Belgium, participating in the 'Thursday Veggie Day' campaign. SUBJECTS: Primary-school children aged between 6 and 12 years. RESULTS: In total, 1242 and 472 main course plate waste observations of conventional and vegetarian menus, respectively, were evaluated. There was no significant difference in plate waste between vegetarian (16.7 %) and conventional (17.3 %) main courses. Overall, the five vegetarian components were found to be nutritionally adequate with a mean score of 2.2 out of 3, compared with 0.4 for the meat component. However, three of the vegetarian components provided >30 % of energy from fat and, in one, the amount of saturated fat exceeded one-third of total fat. CONCLUSIONS: Vegetarian canteen meals offered as part of 'Thursday Veggie Day' appear to be nutritionally appropriate and as acceptable as conventional main courses to children in primary schools in Ghent.

Validity and reproducibility of a self-administered semi-quantitative food-frequency questionnaire for estimating usual daily fat, fibre, alcohol, caffeine and theobromine intakes among Belgian post-menopausal women.

A novel food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was developed and validated to assess the usual daily fat, saturated, mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fatty acid, fibre, alcohol, caffeine, and theobromine intakes among Belgian post-menopausal women participating in dietary intervention trials with phyto-oestrogens. The relative validity of the FFQ was estimated by comparison with 7 day (d) estimated diet records (EDR, n 64) and its reproducibility was evaluated by repeated administrations 6 weeks apart (n 79). Although the questionnaire underestimated significantly all intakes compared to the 7 d EDR, it had a good ranking ability (r 0.47-0.94; weighted kappa 0.25-0.66) and it could reliably distinguish extreme intakes for all the estimated nutrients, except for saturated fatty acids. Furthermore, the correlation between repeated administrations was high (r 0.71-0.87) with a maximal misclassification of 7% (weighted kappa 0.33-0.80). In conclusion, these results compare favourably with those reported by others and indicate that the FFQ is a satisfactorily reliable and valid instrument for ranking individuals within this study population.