Suivi des recommandations du GEMRCN pour la restauration collective : quel impact sur le coût des repas dans les écoles primaires ?

In France, school catering has been subject since 2001 to nutritional recommendations. Updated in 2007 by the market study group “public catering and nutrition” (GEMRCN), these recommendations are concerned with the weights and frequency of serving of certain dishes in a series of 20 successive meals. The objective of the present study was to estimate the impact of GEMRCN on the cost of the basic ingredients of school meals. A first part, descriptive, consisted of analysing, from 42 series of meals served in 2009 in schools, the relation between the adherence to GEMRCN and the cost of meals. The results indicate that GEMRCN was rarely followed and that the level of adherence to it had no effect on the cost. A second part, analytical, consisted of assessing, on the basis of tariffs dating from the third term of 2008, the cost of series of meals published since 1997 in professional journals (n = 120 series), following either the practices in force before 2001 or GEMRCN. The series which followed GEMRCN cost significantly less than those before 2001 (−0.10 €/meal) because the GEMRCN recommends smaller quantities than were used before 2001.