Introduction

In Brazil, the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) was created in 1983, but originated in 1955, during the government of Getúlio Vargas, with the School Meal Campaign (Paraná, 2017).

From 2009 onwards, with the regulation of Law No. 11,947, the Program was linked to promoting sustainable development, establishing that at least 30% of the funds transferred by the federal government to the PNAE must be spent on family farming (Brazil, 2009). Family farming is a form of agricultural production practiced in many Brazilian municipalities and constitutes a strategy for sustainable, social, economic, and cultural development (Souza et al., 2015).

In this context, aiming for advances in sustainable socioeconomic development, Food and Nutrition Security (SAN,) and student health, the National Fund for Education Development (FNDE) published, on May 8, 2020, Resolution No. 6/2020 of the Deliberative Council/FNDE, which provides for the provision of school meals to students within the scope of the PNAE, presenting changes to the school meal menu, to reinforce the presence of natural and minimally processed foods, especially of agroecological, organic and family farming origin; the presence of foods from socio-biodiversity that respect local eating habits, culture and sustainability (Brazil, 2020).

Considering the dimensions of sustainability in the PNAE, more specifically the environmental dimension, since the school is an educational environment, with the potential to work on awareness and create broader contours, one can cite fundamental approaches, for example, the control of waste and the irrational use of food, as well as its relationship with the generation of organic and even inorganic waste (represented by plastic packaging) for the environment and the impacts on public spending (Boschini et al., 2018)

Because of the above, the School Feeding Council (CAE) contemplates a foundation of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, which aims at the participation of public authorities and civil society in the formulation, implementation, and control/supervision of public policies. The CAEs have, among their functions, the guarantee of SAN in schools, and, to this end, they monitor the public resources that are transferred by the FNDE to the executing entities (Da Rocha Santos et al., 2022).

According to CD/FNDE resolution no. 06/2020, the CAE is composed of: 2 representatives of civil society; education workers and students; representatives of students’ parents, and 1 representative of the executive branch, totaling 7 members. Renewal is every 4 years (Brazil, 2020).

 Therefore, this work aimed to understand the performance of municipal CAEs in the state of Minas Gerais in social control and in the dimension of sustainability of the PNAE, in addition to evaluating the effect of an educational intervention on the intention of the counselors to act.

Methodology

Research characterization

This is action research, which is defined as an empirically-based social research model, that is developed in association with an action or with the resolution of a collective problem where participants and researchers are involved in the situation in a participatory or cooperative manner (Thiollent, 2022).

In this work, action research was guided by the use of qualitative methods and techniques, such as discussion groups and content analysis. To characterize the sample, quantitative analyses of mean, median, and standard deviation were also performed.

Recruitment

The research was approved by the National Research Ethics Commission (CONEP) under CAAE: No. 53194421.0.0000.5142, Opinion number: 5,460,401. Participants were aware of the Free and Informed Consent Form (FICF), which was signed after reading and agreeing to participate in the research.

Approximately 1,200 individuals, representing 400 municipalities in the state of Minas Gerais, were invited electronically, via email, as registered on the e-PNAE platform, an application associated with the PNAE. The inclusion criteria were: individuals who were part of the School Feeding Council of a municipality in Minas Gerais and who were available to participate in the virtual meetings that would take place according to the pre-scheduled date and time.

Educational Intervention (workshop) and Discussion Groups

The educational intervention carried out was a workshop consisting of two virtual and synchronous meetings, via the Zoom platform. The meetings took place on August 8th and 11th, 2022, lasting 2 hours each. The workshops were moderated by a researcher with experience in discussion groups, and the participation of two nutritionists as speakers. In addition to the synchronous activities, the workshop included asynchronous activities in the Virtual Learning Environment, Moodle, with the provision of teaching materials, discussion groups, presentations, and short videos on the YouTube channel of the ReFoRSSe project (Training Network for the Preparation of Healthy and Sustainable Meals in Schools), linked to this research (https://www.youtube.com/@projetoreforsse5163).

The discussion groups were guided by the following questions: “What activities, within the scope of the PNAE, does the CAE of which I am a part carry out?”; “How can I contribute to ensuring sustainability and health through social control carried out by CAE?” As the technique predicts, the discussion group sought the active participation of the subject in the research, granting the freedom to express their opinion about the meaning of their actions related to their daily life (Manrique; Pineda, 2009).

Evaluation of the effect of educational intervention on the intention to act of counselors

At the end of the second day of the workshop, the participating counselors answered a structured questionnaire, the questions of which aimed to identify the intention to change the exercise of fiscal control of the PNAE. The changes researched were those that had an impact on the control of school meals, aiming at healthy and adequate food, whose production is focused on sustainability.

Content analysis

For the analysis of qualitative data, the thematic content analysis method proposed by Bardin (1997) was used, which seeks to identify the subjects’ attitudes concerning the object they speak of when they express opinions about content. This analysis has three stages, which are: 1) pre-analysis; 2) exploitation of the material; and #) processing of results, inference, and interpretation. The pre-analysis consisted of organizing the material and, for this, 5 steps were fundamental, namely: 1) exhaustiveness; 2) representativeness; 3) homogeneity; 4) relevance; 5) exclusivity. The exploration of the material consisted of coding the data, which was the moment in which the data were systematically transformed and aggregated into units. In the treatment of results, inference, and interpretation, the basis of the analyses was carried out following the theoretical framework, which provided meaning to the interpretation (Bardin, 1997). To this end, the content was organized into “categories”, characterized by a set of “elements” that together cover a specific theme. Excerpt from the counselors’ speeches, defined as “quote” that illustrates the element addressed and “degree of intensity”, which includes the occurrence in which the element came to light among the participants during the discussion group, being: + used for an occurrence of the element; ++ for two, and +++ for three or more occurrences.

Results

Based on the analysis of the transcript of the statements presented in the discussion group regarding the guiding question: “What activities, within the scope of the PNAE, does the CAE of which I am a part carry out?”, it was possible to group them into the following categories of answers: the most frequent category and with the most occurrences was “Visits”, specifically carrying out visits to school units, with statements such as “… In the action plan we have weekly visits, and, depending on a complaint, or something positive, the CAE inspects, and what works in that location is shared with the rest of the network”; then, 2 categories were verified as frequent, the “Menu” category, specifically the assessment of menu compliance and acceptance, with statements such as “We make visits to see the issue of the snack and how it is being served to the students, we also do the acceptability test.” and the “Training” category, specifically training for lunch workers and CAE qualification, with statements such as “…the municipality received CECANE [Collaborating Center for School Food and Nutrition] last month and the month before, and we had training and qualification with family farming…” Finally, 3 categories registered with less intensity: “Bidding”, the evaluation of food products in the bidding process, “Good Handling Practices”, the verification of hygienic-sanitary conditions and “Exchange” the multiplication of new practices.

When the group was asked: “How can they contribute to ensuring sustainability and healthiness through social control carried out by the CAE?”, it was possible to identify the following challenge: Adherence of the agents involved to the healthiness of the menu. In this challenge, the two most impactful factors were: “Lack of support from the implementing entity”, with statements such as “We visited the schools on foot… it’s very simple… we didn’t have some things in the resolution, and now we can demand them, including from the city hall, which leaves a lot to be desired”; and “Negative interference from teachers in school meals”, with statements such as “I think the biggest problem in relation to acceptance comes from teachers, as they criticize a lot without having knowledge, and then it comes to us, school servants, and some servants also criticize the menu a lot because they don’t have knowledge”. Another challenge that was identified, but mentioned less frequently, was “Low acceptance of the menu”.

However, participants also presented strategies and opportunities for carrying out social control that guarantees the healthiness and sustainability of school meals, such as: “Cultivation of the school garden”, with statements such as “… in early childhood education I work with children, in addition to the garden (…) the garden, the PANC [Non-Conventional Edible Plants], there we also talk about sustainability, the planet and everything else”; Partnerships with the Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Company of the State of Minas Gerais (EMATER) and the holding of public calls; Visits to family farming spaces and locations, with statements such as “Here we also have a partnership, to take children from schools, from CEMEI [Municipal Early Childhood Education Centers] to get to know the rural area, where this partnership comes from, from agricultural food to the municipality, also valuing the farmers of our municipality and the region, in addition to the type of food (vegetables and legumes) that reach the children’s tables at schools being very important”; Actions to make full use of food; Participation in training; and Improvements in food preparation, with statements such as “I help the cooks with the preparations, to avoid ultra-processed foods, with seasonings that people normally buy a lot [referring to industrialized seasonings]”.

At the end of the two-day workshop, participants answered a questionnaire about their intention to change the way they exercise social control. This questionnaire aimed to evaluate the impact of the educational intervention, as a pilot project for other broader scenarios.

Effect of educational intervention on the fiscal control intention of councilors

In this dimension, we had the participation of 12 counselors, representing 7 municipalities. Of the total, 100% of respondents reported intending to question nutritionists about: the health-promoting capacity of the menus prepared in the PNAE; cultural aspects of the preparations included in the menus prepared by the nutritionist; introduction of foods from local family farming into menus prepared by the nutritionist; impact of menus prepared by the nutritionist concerning environmental sustainability; The CAE intends to pay attention to/question about food waste in schools during the production of meals and in leftovers from students’ meals.

Through the meetings, it was possible to foster partnerships between half of the CAEs present and enable the exchange of experiences for the development of future actions.

Discussion

Considering the related themes as synonyms, sustainability, and sustainable development were defined in 1987, in the Brundtlant report, as that which is capable of meeting current demands without compromising future generations in meeting their own needs (Brundtland et al., 1987). However, the application of this concept entails real difficulties, since, in order to meet current needs, the levels of environmental degradation are increasing (Bedin; Faria, 2021).

For Boff (2012), this concept has limitations because it is anthropocentric and does not include other living beings that also need the biosphere and sustainability. For the author, the concept of sustainability must go beyond actions to preserve natural resources and lead individuals to think as subjects integrated into nature. Sustainability directly involves issues such as social justice and values ​​and attitudes towards the development model to which we are subject. It proposes the construction of a new civilizational paradigm in which ecology is not restricted to pure and simple environmentalism.

Regarding the importance of understanding the complexity of sustainability and healthy eating, it is necessary to reinforce within the school community that a healthy diet will have a low environmental impact. Triches (2020) warns that the choice of foods that make up a sustainable diet is not limited to the nutritional aspect, but involves an analysis of the impacts generated on health and the environment. It involves at least five dimensions: health, economic, cultural, environmental, and agricultural, considering the agri-food system. Thus, the author states that a healthy diet that meets nutritional needs will not always be composed of foods that produce fewer greenhouse gases, or that make adequate use of soil, water, and energy.

In the research carried out, to achieve sustainability in school meals, family farming and actions that reduce environmental impacts were cited as strategies and opportunities, such as combating waste by making full use of food and implementing school gardens. In this research, 96% of counselors verify the introduction of food from local family farming, a result higher than the data found by Ferigollo et al. (2017) in Rio Grande do Sul (71.2%), which stands out in family farming production and in the internal supply of food and, consequently, in the supply of food through family farming (Saraiva et al., 2013). This result can be explained by the recognition and favoring of local agriculture by the executing entity.

Regarding school gardens and their impact on sustainability, we considered what Targino and Tabosa (2024) state, presenting them as one of the teaching strategies for Environmental Education that allows, through practical experience, learning centered on the active participation of students, placing them in a prominent place in the teaching-learning process and not as a mere spectator of knowledge. In view of this, it is possible to emphasize what Carniatto (2007) states that all Education is Environmental and, therefore, it is necessary that it be intentionally proposed, at the same time as Education for the Environment, Education in the Environment, and Education about the Environment and that it provides a new way of looking, living, facing, being and relating to the world.

 Another important factor cited as promoting sustainability was actions that should be developed to reduce food waste. Based on information from the United Nations (UN), around a third of the food produced in the world is not consumed by the population, with this food being lost at some stage of the production chain or even being wasted (Bedin; Faria, 2021), it is essential that CAE members also understand their role in monitoring actions that promote sustainability.

 Conclusion

By carrying out this work, it was possible to identify the main facilitators and obstacles to the execution of the CAEs’ duties. Furthermore, participation in the educational intervention appears to have contributed to raising participants’ awareness of the appropriate exercise of CAE and intentions for more effective social control actions. It was also noted that there was a need to intensify training initiatives (courses, training) that help counselors develop skills and competencies, considering the breadth and complexity of the topic of sustainability in school meals, with a focus on improving the quality of life and well-being of producers, consumers and also the planet.