Consuming school meals improves Brazilian children’s diets according to their social vulnerability risk

Objective: To estimate usual diets among Brazilian children regarding the consumption of school meals and social vulnerability risks. Design: A cross-sectional study. School meal consumers were considered those children who reported consuming school meals ≥3 times/week. Social vulnerability risk was classified by an index. Dietary intake was evaluated by one 24 h dietary recall for the whole sample; a second 24 h dietary recall was administered in a sub-sample (38·6 %). The National Cancer Institute’s method was used to estimate children’s usual intake of nutrients and food groups. Setting: Municipal public schools from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Participants: Children ( n 1357) aged 8–12 years. Results: Half of the sample lived in low/medium social vulnerability risk areas and 27·9 % were school meal non-consumers. School meal consumers more frequently lived in high/very high social vulnerability risk areas (76·2 v . 68·7 %). Children with low/medium social vulnerability risk had a higher mean intake of thiamin (1·13 v . 1·04 mg) and a lower mean intake of candy (1·35 v . 1·42 g). Consumption of school meals among children under high/very high social vulnerability risk was associated with higher mean consumption of vitamin C (31·9 v . 24·1 mg), unprocessed/minimally processed foods (956·3 v . 851·9 g), fruits (128·5 v . 90·9 g) and vegetables (58·2 v . 47·1 g). Ultra-processed food product consumption was lower among school meal consumers (136·2 v . 187·7 g), especially ultra-processed beverages (252·5 v . 305·7 g). Conclusions: Consuming school meals was associated with a better usual diet quality, particularly among those with higher social vulnerability risk.