Ambiente alimentar universitário: Caracterização, qualidade da medida e mudança no tempo

Abstract

The food environment is defined as the set of physical, economic, political and socio-cultural resources, opportunities and conditions that influence food choices and nutritional status of the people. Organizational food environment, including the university, has been recognized as strategic for health promotion, since the food offered influence the eating habits of individuals. The aim of this study was to characterize the food environment and its dynamics in a Brazilian public university and evaluate the reliability of a proposed tool to evaluate this context. Their results are shown in the form of two articles. The first aimed was to describe the food environment of a public university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and analyze the changes in the period of one year. For this, was done the evaluation of university food environment for the audit of all establishments traded food preparations and beverages (FPB) inside the campus and its surroundings at the time of data collection during the years 2011 and 2012. The establishments were characterized each year, according to the variables of interest (FPB availability and price, availability of nutritional information, existence of promotions and the possibility of substitutions on the menu and availability of advertising) and was examined the variation in the 12-month interval. On campus, the physical accessibility (existence and proximity of establishments) and affordability of APB was higher than that observed in the surroundings. The availability of food, however, was worse, since it was observed high frequency of unhealthy diets markers such as bonbonniere items, soft drinks, snacks and sandwiches, and low frequency of full meals, fruits and vegetables, even there has been an expansion of access to healthy food due to the opening of the university cafeteria on campus. No establishment provided nutritional information and offering reduced portions and healthy replacements were scarce on campus and surroundings. The food environment of the studied university didn´t facilitated to make healthier food choices, being worst on campus compared with its surroundings. The second article aimed to propose a tool for evaluation of university food environment and assess its reliability in public universities in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. For this, it was elaborated an instrument that consisted in a checklist for evaluating the characteristics of establishments, environmental observation, availability, price, nutritional information and advertisements for healthy and unhealthy eating markers. We used a convenience sample of establishments (n = 64) with different characteristics distributed in seven campuses of three universities. The reliability of the instrument was evaluated by testing interrater and test-retest. For categorical and count variables, the stability of the instrument was estimated by calculating the percentage agreement kappa index and adjusted by the prevalence and the interviewer bias kappa. For continuous variables we calculated the intraclass correlation index. Of the 204 items assessed, the interobserver test showed that 73.5% of the items showed substantial or almost perfect agreement, and for the test-retest reliability, the correlation was 65%. Considering the adjusted kappa, interobserver test and test-retest showed that 93% of items had substantial or almost perfect agreement. Of the 176 items evaluated by percent agreement, 100% show substantial agreement or almost perfect for the interobserver test and the test-retest. It can be assumed that the instrument showed excellent performance in the context in which it was applied. esis will not only support new studies of characterization and intervention on the university food environment, but also inspire the awareness of this environment in an organizational context, providing a political action of incidence on the dynamics of the functioning of the Universities