The Order of Nutritionists – catapulted into the public eye recently because its president Alexandra Bento is the wife of Portugal’s new health minister Manuel Pizarro (and this could implicate an incompatibility somehow) – is campaigning for IVA to be removed from essential foods. Alexandra Bento explains that a typical weekly purchase of food items considered ‘essential’ for maintaining health costs families around €126. Multiply that by four, and it means families struggling with inflation are spending €545 a month, €6,594 a year. By ‘essential foods’, the Order means “bread, rice, pasta, green vegetables, fruit, milk, yogurt, cheese, meat, fish, eggs, pulses, legumes, butter and olive oil”, writes online SIC notícias.
