LETTER FROM THE EDITOR The school canteen facilities: an instrument for the Mediterranean nutrition education

The school canteens are an important mean for the education and well-being promotion addressed to children, that involve teachers and parents as well; for this reason they should not be considered as a mere fulfillment of the nutritional needs. Considering the complexity of the structures involved, the kind of consumers and the possible consequences of related and incidental pathological events, the importance of the canteen facilities stands clear with respect to a health and social program focused to the development of a correct feeding aimed to assure, at the same time, food safety and nutritional quality. The situation of school canteens is different: in Italy, for instance, the canteens for nursery schools, pre-schools, primary and secondary schools pertain to the Municipal Authorities. Considering the huge number of municipalities, more than 8,000 where, per each town, there is at least one school, the services are rather disjointed and unorganized. The refectories can be directly managed by the municipalities themselves, or can be assigned to one or more external companies contracted with a tender; finally, some refectories can be managed by the local authority together with a contract company, i.e., a mixed management. On the basis of the data provided by Bio Bank (2010), the contract system is largely diffused, as it is chosen by 74 % of the canteens (6), whereas 15 % choose the direct management and only 9 % the mixed system. The epidemiological characteristics related to the nutritional status and the lifestyles of the samples of school population are surveyed with the monitoring of national or international projects. The National Guidelines for school canteen facilities are suggested by the need to facilitate, since the early childhood, the adoption of correct eating habits in order to promote a healthy well-being and to prevent chronic and degenerative diseases (like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, osteoporosis, etc.) where a wrong diet represents one of the main risk factors. On the other hand, the radical lifestyle changes of families and individuals have brought to the need of having at least one meal outside, using the available food services. It is well-known that the promotion of a correct and healthful lifestyle is the primary target, even at the international level. The access and the practice of a healthful diet is one of the fundamental rights to achieve the highest attainable standard of health, particularly in the first years of one’s life. The ‘‘Convention of the Childhood rights’’, held in 1989 by the UN, ratified the right of the child of having a healthful and appropriate diet in order to achieve the highest attainable standard of health and the ‘‘European Social Charter’’, reviewed in 1996, stated that ‘‘every human being has the right to benefit from any measures that enable him to achieve the best level of good health obtainable’’. In 2006, The WHO (World Health Organization) Regional Office for Europe approved the ‘‘Gaining health Program’’, that provided a multi-sectorial strategy aimed at the prevention and control of the chronic disease. At the end of 2007, the WHO, together with the European Commission and 27 State Members of the Union, adopted the declaration about ‘‘The health in every policy’’, as to promote the development and implementation of policies S. Sukkar (&) IRCCS San Martino-IST, Genoa, Italy e-mail: [email protected]