Nutritional strategies implemented in South American schoolchildren. A look at child nutrition in developing countries.

Abstract

Nutrition is extremely important for the normal development of human beings, therefore, it is important to know the process that has been carried out to improve school feeding processes in Latin America, taking the Andean countries as a reference.

It is clear that in Latin America the School Feeding Program (PAE) is of great importance due to its objectives, coverage and the resources allocated by the State for its operation, making it one of the most important social programs in the region. This research has the following objectives:

Description on nutritional strategies that have improved school nutrition indices in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.

Identification of foods that do not contribute to adequate nutrition for children.

A bibliographic search was conducted in databases of the United Nations (UN), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Ministries of Education of South American countries. To complement the research, articles were also searched in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Scopus, using the terms: nutritional strategies, child nutrition, schoolchildren in South America, malnutrition, PAE.

The present research applies the historical and comparative description of certain school nutrition projects that have been implemented from 2008 to 2018 in the Andean countries.

South American countries, especially the Andean countries have reformed their school feeding processes, thus also improving social aspects such as economy and education, based on equity strategies that promote the incorporation and stability of students to the academic sector.

The PAE work under the comprehensive protection approach, contributing mainly to the guarantee of two fundamental rights: education and food for children and adolescents enrolled in the public education system.