The assessment of the use of cooking oil/fat and salt in dining food is an unsolved issue in non-quantitative nutrition environment evaluation, and the nutrition environment of Chinese-style dining establishments has not been effectively assessed. This study developed two evaluation tools: the Nutrition Environment Scoring for Chinese Style University/Work-site Canteens (NESC-CC) and the Oil-Salt Visual Analogue Scale (OS-VAS) and applied them in nine university canteens. The NESC-CC, which includes comprehensive items from the healthiness of food availability, cooking methods to other factors that support healthy choices, is featured by adjusting the scoring categories and items to suit Chinese food culture and canteen operation model. The OS-VAS is a novel virtual analog scale (VAS) based on the fuzzy judgement of the diners. It requires the randomly recruited respondents to rate their personal preference for salty taste/greasy food preference, overall saltiness/greasiness of canteen dishes, and personal demands for salt/cooking oil reduction. The oil use score, the salt use score, and the total score are derived from the given formula. The field tests of the NESC-CC in nine university canteens at three time points showed that this tool was able to effectively distinguish the nutrition environment of the Chinese food-style canteens with good reliability and validity. The result of OS-VAS scoring achieved a good resolution of the overall salt and oil/fat use and confirmed our hypothesis on the fuzzy judgement of the diners These tools are suitable for the comprehensive evaluation of Chinese-style canteens and have the potential to be applied to more group-meal-providing establishments.
Keywords: Chinese-style canteens; nutrition environment; oil and salt; visual analogue scale.