Improving the Performance of Children School Meal using Meal Report at Kindergarten School in Indonesia: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Kindergarten children are prone to be stunted. Currently, most kindergarten school run school meal program. AIM: The aim of the study was to assess the effect of school meal report on the meal performance. METHODS: The study was a Quasi Experiment. Four kindergarten schools were selected; two schools as intervention study and the other two schools as the control group. We enrolled 106 mothers. There were five items of food performance to be scored from 6 to 10. While children in the control group were suggested to bring meals every day without a school meal report. RESULTS: At baseline the range score of five items was not significantly different, the average score was 7.15±0.21 vs 7.09±0.18; p>.05 in the intervention group and control group respectively. However, at end-line the scores meal performance in the study group was significantly improve and made it meaningfully different than in the control group (8.94±0.31 vs 7.52±0.40; p<.05). The meal performance in both groups started at low performance. However, in study group at week four the scores gradually improved to the best performance at week eight till week twelve, while meal performance children in control group had a low performance. CONCLUSION: Meal report is effective in improving meal performance of kindergarten children. Future studies need to find the effect of school meal reports on nutritional status and frequency of sickness.