Análise econômico-ambiental e nutricional em processos de produção de refeições

Abstract

The Brazilian cuisine is worldwide recognized for its multicultural influence. Influence from people of different nationalities that settled in the country. The creation of trade routes between regions, in the past, gave rise to several typical dishes. These typical dishes are today part of the Brazilian culture and may be found in restaurants and houses around the country. Recently, changes in population's lifestyle and income has driven the rise of business offering food services in Brazil. Following this trend, concerns regarding the number of commercial food service establishments that shut down in their first year of operation are increasing. Several studies point out that a large part of these problems is driven by the lack of planning and costs management by business owners. In addition to cost and management, issues associated with food nutrition, sustainability, and consumer habits, are becoming increasingly important in recent years. For this reason, these topics are priority on the international research agenda. Therefore, this Thesis explored two objectives. In the first chapter, objective one was to analyze the production costs of different dishes produced in a restaurant school using the Standard Cost Accounting method. In the second chapter, objective two was to analyze the environmental, economic and nutritional performance of the production of two typical Brazilian dishes (Arroz Carreteiro e Galinhada). To attend objective two, we used life cycle assessment and life cycle costing methods aligned to the Worker's Food Program (PAT) table to assess nutritional issues. In the first chapter, we explored the first objective by analyzing all costs to prepare and serve 69 dishes from the restaurant's menu the results provided several insights to improve management and cost control. In the second chapter, the results show that in environmental terms, Arroz Carretero causes a higher contribution to global warming potential in comparison to Galinhada. The same occurs in economic terms since Galinhada presents a lower cost of production than the Arroz Carretero. At this stage, it was possible to identify hot spots, either from an environmental and economic perspective. Regarding nutritional aspects, both dishes performed lower than PAT's minimum exigencies for Energy content and carbohydrates while lipids attended the PAT's requirements, on the other hand, sodium and protein were slightly above the minimum requirements. In conclusion, the dishes could be balanced with side plates to attend PAT's recommendations regarding a complete meal.