Abstract
Sustainability is the integration of actions focused on three pillars: environmental, social, and economical. Implementing sustainable development ranges from the pursuit of quality of life, and from environmental balance to break with the current pattern of development. Therefore, the objective of this work was to understand and analyze the sustainability indicators implemented in the production of meals in food services. The authors developed specific search strategies for Scopus, Web of Science, Pubmed, Lilacs, Google Scholar, and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global to perform the systematic review. The authors evaluated the methodological quality of the included studies using the Meta-analysis Statistical Assessment and Review Instrument (MASTARI). A total of 31 cross-sectional studies were analyzed. Twenty four (77.41%) of the studies had activities that covered the three indicators (environmental, social, and economic); 22.59% (n = 7) used two indicators in which 12.90% (n = 4) presented environmental and economic indicators and 9.67% (n = 3) with environmental and social indicators. This research indicates that the studies in food services are seeking to insert indicators that cover the three pillars of sustainable meal production. It is worth mentioning that in the literature, many works encompasses the importance of sustainability, but few explore which indicators are most applied or detail their implementation in food services. More studies are needed to estimate better the indicators being applied in food services.
Highlights
Modern societal changes in the way of life, from the inclusion of women in the labor market, the difficulty of displacing workers, to long working hours, and the lack of time to prepare meals, have contributed to the increasing number of meals out of the home [1,2,3]
A total of 135 studies were excluded as 21 of them were not original studies; 95 of them mentioned the importance of using sustainable indicators but did not implement them; seven studies were not performed on food services; 12 of them focused the study on the consumer and not on food production (Figure 1)
This study aimed to evaluate the sustainability indicators implemented in the production of meals in food services
Summary
Modern societal changes in the way of life, from the inclusion of women in the labor market, the difficulty of displacing workers, to long working hours, and the lack of time to prepare meals, have contributed to the increasing number of meals out of the home [1,2,3]. This demand increases the number of food services emerging in the market, contributing to the economic sector, increasing job opportunities, and generating income [3,4]. During all stages of meal production, ranging from field production, transportation, receiving, storage, production, and distribution of the meal, some actions cause environmental and economic impacts [3,8]
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