Brazilian School Feeding Program: the imbalance in its implementation

Abstract

The Brazilian School Feeding Program (PNAE in Portuguese), aims to provide adequate food intake and food and nutrition education for all the elementary public school students in Brazil. Its implementation has been chiefly analyzed and evaluated by public health and food studies. Based on the transition theory and other sociological references, we aim to evaluate the PNAE’s potential to develop new and effectively more healthy and sustainable food practices. The empiric research consisted of interviews with main actors in the implementation of the PNAE at the local level in Florianópolis city, Santa Catarina. Amid the conclusions, we highlight the healthy food negative reception by local actors, whose imaginary links childhood with large consumption of low-quality sugar. The analysis also indicates the outsourcing of service as a relevant problem that undermines the program implementation. This outsourcing mechanism blocks the exchange knowledge and perceptions on healthy food and sustainability among the different actors, taking the process of construction of the program distant from the PNAE’s goals. Despite these problems, we believe the PNAE can be able to influence new food practices if the symbolic distance between healthy and sustainable food understandings get reduced.

Keywords

• alimentação escolar
• sustentabilidade
• teoria da transição
• educação alimentar e nutricional