Description
Socio-economic disparities in Portugal are inherent to nutritional inequality and obesity among school children. There is an urgency to launch an economically viable dietary program, at public school level, that targets affected communities. The objective of this project is to develop a public health infrastructure, involving education and progress-monitoring, to serve healthy foods to school children in disadvantaged school districts. Because of its availability at the local level, known health benefits and affordability, we propose a comprehensive plan to provide a diet of Mediterranean based diet to the affected school children. The project will count on the participation of about 6000 students, and their parents/legal guardians, 560 teachers, 190 non-teaching staff and 160 health professionals in the Lisbon area. The project aims to increase children’s intake of adequate amounts of vegetables and fruits by ≥ 20%, bring the intake of healthy breakfast to 100%, and reduce the salt and saturated fats intake by 20%. The project is aligned with the National Priority Programs in Portugal and the World Health Organization.
Summary of project results
Overweight and child youth obesity are a huge public health issue in developed countries. It is urgent to develop and implement effective strategies that promote healthy eating habits and physical activity in this population The Eat Mediterrean Project is a community intervention project that aimed to promote Mediterranean diet in schools among children and young people. More concretely this project aimed to create a sustainable model of promotion of a healthy diet that compromises students, school environment, families and health services in the community. The project had started performing an assessment of the nutritional status, in order to identify situations of lower weight, overweight and obesity among students. Of 3965 students assessed, 829 students were overweight, 433 obese and 36 had lower weight. These students with nutritional deviations were submitted to a nutritional and motivational education program, with 4 individual sessions. The project had also provided training in child and youth anthropometry, nutrition and physical activity prescription to teachers and health professionals (138 teachers and 40 health professionals were trained). Students and families also assisted to education sessions regarding themes such as breakfast, snacks, soup and Mediterranean diet (971 education sessions were given during the project). Food menus for school cafeterias with more healthy and nutritional balance meals were also developed and applied. In the final stage of the project, when the project was assessed, it was observed that the project allowed an improvement in the nutritional status of the students (10% of the students had an improvement in their nutritional, with reductions in the prevalence of overweight, obesity and thinness). It also allowed an increase in the consumption of fruit and vegetables.
Summary of bilateral results