Primary school children in Portugal: fat shock

The percentage of children in Portugal aged 6 to 8 years who are overweight or obese increased to 31.9% and 13.5%, respectively, reversing the trend recorded in recent years, according to the Child Nutrition Surveillance System (COSI), using data from 2022. Coordinated by the National Institute of Health Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA), in its capacity as the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborative Centre for Child Nutrition and Obesity, COSI aims to produce comparable data between European countries and monitor childhood obesity every three years in a nationally representative sample of State schools of the 1st cycle of basic education. This result, although deeply depressing in a country that used to have such a balanced Mediterranean diet, is on a par with the current European average of 29%, which means one in three children are overweight.