Environmental Impacts of University Restaurant Menus: A Case Study in Brazil

Abstract

The production of collective meals in institutional restaurants demands a great use of natural resources. The search for strategies to reduce negative environmental impacts in this sector is essential to offer meals that are not only healthy but also sustainable. In this study the evaluation of water footprint (WF) of menus offered in a public university restaurant located in the northeast of Brazil and the verification of the origin of foodstuff purchased to compose the menus in 2 months were carried out. The study is transversal, descriptive, and exploratory and the data were collected between March and April 2018. Water footprint of 112 traditional and vegetarian menus was calculated and the results showed that the WF of traditional menus was higher (p < 0.0001) than the vegetarian menus. Weekly average per capita of WF was 2752.0 L for traditional menus and 1113.9 L for the vegetarian option, with animal protein intake in the traditional version being the main factor for this difference. It was identified that 49.47% of the foods used in the studied period originated from the same state where the restaurant is located, with fresh vegetables being the food group with the highest contribution. Thus, we conclude that although the restaurant purchases local food products, the environmental impact of the choice of foods that is included in the menus must be taken into account. The utilization of local foodstuff and the decrease of animal protein in the menus can be a good strategy to encourage sustainable actions in food services meal production.

Sustainable Perspective in Public Educational Institutions Restaurants: From Foodstuffs Purchase to Meal Offer

“…In another study, the same authors found an average WF per capita of 2099.1 liters per meal per day, result close to the average per capita value found in this study [9]. Hatjiathanassiadou et al [34] found WF values per capita of 2752.4 L for traditional lunch menus and 1113.9 L for vegetarian menus. The difference in these values was due to the use of foods of animal origin, mainly beef [34].…”

“…Similar to the aforementioned work, a case study conducted in a university restaurant, evaluating the origin of the purchased foodstuffs, showed a notable participation of foods/ingredients from state (49.47%) and regional (15.79%) origin, which were distributed in the categories of vegetables and fruits, milk and dairy products [34]. This finding is in agreement with those found in this research, in which food of local, state and regional origin add up to more than 50.00% of the foodstuffs purchased in all six PEIR evaluated.…”

“…Hatjiathanassiadou et al [34] found WF values per capita of 2752.4 L for traditional lunch menus and 1113.9 L for vegetarian menus. The difference in these values was due to the use of foods of animal origin, mainly beef [34]. In Mediterranean cities, the WF of daily diets ranges from 3277.0 to 5789.0 L /person/day [83].…”

“…WF of the meals served in the restaurants was calculated based on the values compiled by Hatjiathanassiadou et al [34], taking as a reference publications by Mekonnen and Hoekstra [35], Hoekstra [36], Hoekstra [37] and Pahlow et al [38]. For foods that did not have WF available in the literature, foods that belong to the same group were used as reference.…”

Brazilian Community Restaurants’ Low-Income Food Handlers: Association between the Nutritional Status and the Presence of Non-Communicable Chronic Diseases

“…In Brazil, low-cost food services more frequently hire untrained and low-educational-level food handlers [21,22]. All of these factors can impact the social and economic aspects of sustainability [5,[23][24][25].…”