Acceptability and Satiety Evaluation of a Developed Nutritionally Balanced School Meal

Five nutritionally designed school meals were developed in a form of pastes based on leguminous seeds (lentil, chick pea, and soya) mixed with dairy ingredients. All formulas contain groundnut, and few contained crushed nuts providing inclusions inside the prototypes to test acceptance. The products were fortified with essential minerals and vitamins following the DRI guideline for children. Developed meals were served as a breakfast meal to ~200 students (6-9 years juniors; 10-14 years seniors) of one of the Sudanese basic schools (Omdurman City) for 21 days to substitute a traditional breakfast meal boiled Pigeon pea colloquially called “Balila” served routinely to the students. This paper covers acceptability of favorable products behavioral responses of senior and junior students to four meal/subject interactions coverings temptation to finishing the whole meal, reason(s) for not finishing the whole meal, time needed to finish the meal, and degree of satiety the students feel during teaching hours. Almost 95% of the senior students interacted positively with pastes based on lentil or chick pea finish the product as evidenced by the short time (<10 min) to finishing or stop taking the meal in ≤ 10 minutes. All past products provide satiety; senior students judged that lentil based paste(s) as the meal that secures full satiety during school hours. Unlike seniors, more than 95% of junior students finished more of the soy-based meal, one third of them took more time to finish lentil-based meal indicate that the results reflected satisfaction by taking less quantities from all products offered. Degree of satiety feeling among junior students fluctuated where >90% of them confirmed satisfactory degree of satiety www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/fsns Food Science and Nutrition Studies Vol. 3, No. 4, 2019 2 Published by SCHOLINK INC. compared to all products offered.


Introduction
Nutritional readers need no reminding of the consequences of the spread of malnutrition among population of most developing countries. Black et al. (2008) summarized such consequences; whereas FAO (2006) highlighted root causes of food insecurity leading to such consequences, and when it comes at the door of vulnerable groups such as children, FAO (2009) itself indicated kind of strategies that prevent or reduce under-nutrition and combat child mortality.
Almost, a decade back, Sudan Ministry of General Education (SMGE, 2008) launched a school feeding program that reached about 1.2 million children throughout the country with the objective of increasing school attendance, particularly of girls, and relieving short-term hunger while transforming resources to vulnerable households. Lack of food in the households is reportedly one of the main reasons for school dropout, according to baseline survey carried out by SMGE (2008).
The child performance in morning schooling is very much related to taking right nutritious food that is rich in energy, protein, carbohydrates and calorific sources, e.g., breakfast items, to help in focus and concentration, a pre-requisite behavior for better learning and hence more opportunities in life.
The market for children's foods is continuously growing, and children have an increasing influence on food purchase decisions. This has led to the use of children in product development programs by food manufacturers, to the development of twin target markets for adults and children in many food categories (Jean-Xavier, 2001), and to requirements for palatable, healthy and nutritious food for children amidst trends towards convenience foods and demands for responsible nutrition. The sensory properties of any food item are important determinants of its acceptance among consumers, and as a result, the need for sound methodology for sensory testing with children has increased (ASTM, 1992;Guinard, 2001;ASTM, 2003). The principal objective of this effort was to test the acceptability of nutritionally balanced school meals developed to substitute existing conventional breakfast meal served to needy students at most of the Sudanese primary (Basic) schools. The test also embraced satiety profile of meals to answer their level of stomach fulfillment during the school hours.

Methodology
Based on an earlier preliminary study by Ahfad University for Women (AUW) team, (NHCTR, 2017) concerning acceptability and quality of several school meals, only five meals were then selected and developed by Samil Industrial Co., Onyx, and Tweed Research Center of Nutriset Group, based on plant foods (e.g., soybean, chickpea, lentil, peanuts, etc.), and dairy ingredients, in a form of pastes.
The meals were additionally fortified with recommended gaps in Iron, Iodine, Zinc, Vitamins of A, B9, B12, and C. A total of ~200 school children (6-9 year juniors; 10-14 year seniors) studying at one of Omdurman City (Sudan) primary schools were selected to assure minimum classes attendance of 180 children throughout the study. Recruited students were served ethically (DIUS, 2007) developed meals in a form of paste-in sachets (100 g each) for 15 school days plus 5 days given to the reference conventional school meal prepared traditionally from boiled salted or sweetened pigeon pea colloquially called "Balila" and served routinely to the children as a school meal.
Using a concise questionnaire consisted of elements relevant to sensorial issues (Brace, 2004), the students with the help of the study group, were asked to judge on the five products (meals) guided by multi-descriptive sensory evaluation techniques (Gordin, 1987;ISO, 1988;Poste et al., 1991;Lawless & Heymann, 1998;Schutz & Cardello, 2001;Meilgaard et al., 2007), and facial drawing procedures to express level of satisfaction by one of three choices (Happy face that reflects acceptance of product; no-expression face that expresses neither/nor decision; and sad face that expresses rejection of the product) simplified to suit their level of perception (Goldstein, 2006). Table 1 shows distribution and number of school students served school meals by class and age group.

Results and Discussion
The initial week started with serving the conventional school meal (Balila) for 5 days as a control, followed by the newly developed products (5 of them; A: Soy based product "Vitamamba"; B: Lentil based product; C: Lentil based product + inclusion product; D: Chick pea based product; E: Chick pea based product + inclusion product) served for consecutive 15 school study days giving 3 alternating days for each product. The number of students receiving breakfast meal daily for 5 days ranged between 38-54 for males and 39-55 for females from the junior class; 6-9 years (3 rd grade) giving a total range of 81-109 students of this category. Similarly, the number of students from the senior class; 10-14 years (7 th grade) receiving the same meal for the same period of time ranged between 35-55 for males, and 41-53 for females giving a total range of 79 to 105 students of this category. Table 1 itself shows a total of 1854 meals offered to students from the juniors and 1844 meals offered to students from the seniors by the end of the study. A: Soy based product Vitamamba; B: Lentil based product; C: Lentil based product + inclusion product; D: Chick pea base product; E: Chick pea based + inclusion product.
Figures 1 and 2 (Tables 2a and 2b, respectively) show percent contribution by junior female and male students, and senior ones, respectively, receiving Balila in first week calculated from total. It was obvious that senior females were more punctual to attending school classes (Table 2b; Figure 2), the observation that concerned us for the following three weeks assigned for serving the newly developed meals. The negative fluctuation in percent number of junior female and male students (Table 3) receiving new meals was tolerable and seems normal with respect to students' daily attendance.
Surprisingly, unlike the junior students, the week following the initial Balila week witnessed positive fluctuation in number of senior participants (Table 4) which would suggest more or less consistency in number of juniors and seniors male and female students who participated to the four week testing program. The increase or decrease in number of students taking the meals during the course of the study did not reflect improvement or decline in school attendance, since the latter phenomenon is associated with certain factors such as in-door or out-door school activities. The second week of serving newly developed products (Tables 3 and 4) started to partially reflect actual response of participant's contribution to taking the new meals. The same second week of feeding the new meals witnessed highest number of meals served (478 meals) with a slight decrease in the final week (467 meals) mainly coming from female students due to certain domestic school reasons beyond acceptability factors. Week 3   control against all products presented to the students. The number of the senior students (10-14 years) finishing the whole sachet content (Table 5) increased by serving days (weeks 2 and 3) with all products presented, although products B (lentil-based) and D (Chick pea-based) showed better consumption (> 95% of participants) compared to the rest of the products. Soya based product (A) seemed to be least acceptable to senior students by the end of the test. The response of junior students (6-9 years) to finishing the whole sachet content is shown in Table 6. Surprisingly, juniors seemed to have different opinion on the products by giving product A (Soy-based) the lead in finishing whole sachet content by the end of the feeding test period of time (> 95% of participants), followed by products C (Lentil/Inclusion-based), and B(Lentil-based) which registered 93.5% and 93.4% number of participants, respectively, finishing the whole sachet contents. With juniors, product E (Chick pea/Inclusion-based) was the least tempting to finish it all. A: Soy based product Vitamamba; B: Lentil based product; C: Lentil based product + inclusion product; D: Chick pea base product; E: Chick pea based + inclusion product. A: Soy based product Vitamamba; B: Lentil based product; C: Lentil based product + inclusion product; D: Chick pea base product; E: Chick pea based + inclusion product.
Tables 7 and 8 show responses of senior and junior students, respectively; to reasons for not finishing the whole contents of sachet (whole meal). None of the senior students (Table 7) (Gregory & Kadri, 2015).
The junior students' behaviour in finishing the whole meal is shown in Table 8. It seems that the 100g material offered in sachet was too much for most of them since more than two third of them felt they had enough (stomach full) before finishing the sachet content. The latter feeling is slightly different from that full satisfaction feeling expected to reflect lingering satiety during the school hours. Product D (Chick pea based) seemed to be the favourite for juniors, followed by product B (Lentil based).     Tables 9 and 10 show time needed for senior and junior students to finish and/or stop taking more of the meal. It was obvious that more than 90% of the senior students (Table 9) did not take much time (≤ 10 minutes) in finishing or stop taking the sachet content of all the 5 products offered to them successively on daily basis. The positive side of this test outcome is that the sachet content (the paste), was easily chewable, non-sticky, easily swallowed, and palatable enough to hasten the eating process.
The latter characteristic usually encourages eaters to continue taking more or finishing any stuff offered (Barbara & Sandra, 2010). Table 10 also shows the time taken by junior students to finish or stop taking the sachet content. Although more than two third (> 68%) of the junior participants needed 10 minutes only or even less to finish the meal, the other one third is of concern to us for reasons that made them took 15 minutes or more to finish lentil -based pastes (B&C  A: Soy based product Vitamamba; B: Lentil based product; C: Lentil based product + inclusion product; D: Chick pea base product; E: Chick pea based + inclusion product.  Tables 11 and 12 show responses of senior and junior students, respectively; to degree of satiety feeling during class room hours following meal intake. Feeling full satiety by senior students (Table 11) during the school hours was improved towards the third week of testing the new products. By the end of the feeding test, product B (Lentil based) proved to fulfil that degree of satiety (100%) intended to quench hunger until the students finish their lessons and go back home. The other products were by no means less than B in giving that feeling (97.6-98.9% degree of satiety) of full satiety although sachet content of some of them were not fully consumed by seniors (Table 5) compared to B product. Table 12 shows fluctuation in degree of satiety feeling among junior students during the school hours following meal taking in the first and second weeks of the serving process, with more or less satisfactory degree of satiety offered by all the products by the end of the third week (94.1-98.9%). It then becomes hard to judge on poorness of any of them.  A: Soy based product Vitamamba; B: Lentil based product; C: Lentil based product + inclusion product; D: Chick pea base product; E: Chick pea based + inclusion product.
In conclusion, senior students (10-14 years) seemed to have appreciated paste meal based on lentil or chick pea as reflected in finishing all the meals in less than 10 minutes and also showed full-satiety feeling during the daily school hours. One fifth of the seniors expressed dislike for soy based paste as a reason for not finishing the paste. With respect to junior students (6-9 years), they seemed to have different opinions by showing more appreciation to the soy-based paste and taking less time to finish the product, although they expressed full-satiety feeling with all the products during the daily school hours.