Estimation of the availability of iron in the school meals of Municipal Centers for Early Childhood Education of a capital city in northeastern Brazil.

The final stage of iron deficiency is iron deficiency anemia, with repercussions for human health, especially in children under five. Studies conducted in Brazilian public daycare centers show high prevalence of anemia. The present study aims to evaluate the availability of iron in the meals of the Municipal Centers of Early Childhood Education in Maceió. The experimental design comprises: selection of algorithms; menu evaluation; calculation of the estimates; comparison between the estimates obtained and the recommendations; and analysis of correlation between meal constituents, and of the concordance between the absorbable iron estimates. Four algorithms were selected and a monthly menu consisting of 22 days. The correlation analysis showed a moderate positive correlation to animal tissue (AT) vs non-heme iron (r = 0.42; p = 0.04), and negative to AT vs calcium (r = -0.54; p = 0.09) and calcium vs phytates (r = -0.46, p = 0.03). Estimates of absorbable iron ranged from 0.23 to 0.44 mg/day. The amount of iron available, unlike the total amount of iron offered, does not meet the nutritional recommendations on most school days. The Bland-Altman analysis indicated that the Monsen and Balinfty [24] and Rickard et al. [27] showed greater agreement. The results confirm the need to adopt strategies to increase the availability of iron in school meals.