Optimierung der Verpflegung in Kita und Grundschule: Ergebnisse eines Delphi-Verfahrens im Rahmen der Evaluation eines IN FORM-Projekts

BACKGROUND: As part of “IN FORM—Germany’s initiative for healthy nutrition and more exercise”, the project “Optimizing catering offer in daycare centers and schools” aims to provide effective impulses in behavioral and environmental prevention and to advance the linking of nutritional education with catering offer (meals) in daycare centers and elementary schools. A scientific evaluation of the project in Baden-Württemberg, Germany was commissioned in 2019 by the Regional Center of Nutrition Baden-Württemberg at the State Authority for Agriculture, Nutrition and Rural Affairs Baden-Württemberg, Germany. OBJECTIVES: The method-integrative evaluation was concluded with a Delphi process in which consensual recommendations for action to optimize the catering offer in daycare centers and elementary schools were identified. For this purpose, experts were asked for their opinions on the quality of the catering offer, the networking of relevant actors, formal nutritional education and the structural integration of the catering offer (informal learning). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A three-stage online Delphi method was carried out. In two survey rounds, the experts (practitioners involved in the project and external scientists) were interviewed in a standardized way. This was followed by an online workshop in which dissenting opinions from the previous surveys were openly discussed with the experts and possible backgrounds were investigated. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The experts agree that a health-promoting catering offer in daycare centers and schools is essential for informal learning in the field of nutrition and should be linked to formal nutritional education. For the implementation, they see a central role in the daycare and school management and fixed contact persons in the respective facilities. The experts see a need for action in sensitization, participation, and training of various actors as well as in the expansion of support services for daycare centers and elementary schools.