Nutritional quality of children’s menu

Abstract

This thesis is about nutrient content of food for children. The quality and good content of nutrients are incredibly important things, because they affect on children’s future life and their habits of food consumption. It is known that consumed food has an influence on devel-opment of an organism, especially in childhood, in that period when basic habits of food in-take are formed. The children's food habit and relations of these habits with health are found out. How these habits are formed and what influence they have. This information are identi-fied by literature review; also, during the literature review, common children's problems are found. Personnel real observation and questionnaire were applied.

The aim of this thesis is to find out quality of children’s menus in different restaurants in two countries Finland and Russia. Some topics were covered to achieve this goal, such as: what is nutrition; what is children's eating behavior; what are children's habits in food; what recom-mendations food guides of different countries make for children to eat; comparison between Finnish and Russian guides.

One of the objects of this thesis is collecting information of offered meals for children in res-taurants. What food for children is offered? Also, nutrient content was calculated and com-pared with recommendation.

For the practical part of project there is planning new menu for kids and providing Mother’s day in Talli. Calculating of nutrient content of new offered food was counted as well. Addi-tionally, surveys of children and parents were conducted to identify some points of thesis and to understand satisfaction of food on the Mother's day.

The study was limited to children aged from 4 to 12.