READ ME File For Chapter5_School_Meals


ReadMe Author: Annabelle Fisher, University of Southampton ORCID ID 0000-0003-2230-7954 

This dataset supports the thesis entitled "Defining Solutions for the Improvement of Food and Nutrition Security in the UK: Parsnips as a Case Study for Improving Folate Status through Dietary Intervention"

AWARDED BY: University of Southampton
DATE OF AWARD: 2026


Date of data collection: 
2021 - 2025

Information about geographic location of data collection: 
Data were collected from businesses working in the Southampton area.



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DATA & FILE OVERVIEW
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This dataset contains:

- 20250719_allfolatecombosforfigures.csv
- README.txt


Relationship between files, if important for context:

The README file applies to the 20250719_allfolatecombosforfigures.csv files

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METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION
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Full information on the methods for collection/generation of the data are included in the main thesis document entitled "Defining Solutions for the Improvement of Food and Nutrition Security in the UK: 
Parsnips as a Case Study for Improving Folate Status through Dietary Intervention - Chapter 4 - Investigating the provision of folate in school meals in Southampton and exploring the potential for improvements " 

In brief, information on the recipes and ingredients of school meals provided in Southampton were obtained from a local school meal provider. These ingredients were matched to items in the McCance and Widdowson CoFID dataset to retreive nutritional information, which was filtered to only information on the folate content of foods. This was then combined with data wrangling in R to produce the amount of folate available on each day covered in the school meal menu. Folate provision was related to daily requirements for primary school aged children.  

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DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION
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Number of variables:
8

Number of cases/rows: 
286

Variable list, defining any abbreviations, units of measure, codes or symbols used:

Variable	|Type		|Description							|Unit	
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day		| factor	| day of the week the combo_id was available on 		| -
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week		| factor	| week the combi_id was available on 				| -
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combo_id	| character	| unique identifier for each possible combination of menu items	| -	
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main		| character	| the main menu item included in the combination		| -
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carb		| character	| the carbohydrate menu item included in the combination	| -
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veg		| character	| the vegetable menu item included in the combination		| -	
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dessert		| character	| the dessert menu item included in the combination		| -	
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total_folate	| numeric	| the total amount of folate provided by the combination	| ug
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Date that the file was created: July, 2025

