According to the study, which involved 17,698 children between the ages of 2 and 10 years from schools and pre-schools across the country, 65 percent do not follow the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation for a minimum intake of three portions of fruit and two servings of vegetables daily.
This percentage rises to 68.2 percent in children aged six and seven, the president and founder of APCOI, Mário Silva, told Lusa News Agency, noting that “it is the group that stands out the most negatively, consuming the least,” fruits and vegetables.
The researchers also found that 85.8 percent of students eat lunch every day in the school cafeteria and that more than half of those students (54.5 percent) said they do not include vegetables on their plates.
According to Silva, “these are very alarming numbers” that require a change of behaviour.
“We have to raise awareness among parents about the gravity of these numbers so that they are concerned about this and pay more attention to what they put on the children’s plates,” Silva told Lusa.
The APCOI researchers analysed the effects of the implementation of the 6th edition of the “Fruit Heroes - Healthy School Lunch” project in the 2016-2017 school year, in the dietary habits of the participating students.
Comparing the initial data with the data collected after the 12 weeks of participation in the project, 41.9 percent of the children increased their daily consumption of fruit.
APCOI’s research was carried out with 17,698 children from 388 schools across the country that are part of the APCOI project, which covers 10 percent of all schools and pre-schools in Portugal.