Mapping research associating Brazilian National School Feeding Program and its dietary and socioeconomic outcomes

The Brazilian National School Feeding Program (PNAE) is a universal free school feeding program that aims to promote healthy nutrition and student health. Since 2009, with the introduction of mandatory procurement from the family farming component, this policy has also aimed to improve family farm livelihoods, which is reflected in the growing number of published studies that have examined both outcomes. This study aims to map and describe the available peer-reviewed literature on the associations between PNAE, and nutritional and socioeconomic outcomes using statistical text analysis to visualize research trends over time and identify gaps. The text analysis was based on articles published up to May 2024 in SciELO, VHL, PubMed, Econlit, Science Direct, Scopus, Web of Science, NBER, and Embase. Results reveal: (i) a rise in the number of published papers addressing food procurement from the family farming component of the PNAE, evincing how changes in legislation have shifted research priorities; (ii) academic production on the PNAE is concentrated in Brazil, primarily in medicine (66%), agricultural sciences (16%) and social sciences (12%), with an emphasis on “nutrition”, “food security and nutrition”, and “family farming”, while fields such as economics, public administration and law remain underrepresented; and (iii) that sustainability is emerging as a new topic. This methodology offers an alternative to meta-analysis for heterogeneous studies, although it does not assess the quality of the included studies or compare their results.