APCOI – Portuguese Association Against Childhood Obesity launched today on the website www.heroisdafruta.com, a nationwide campaign to encourage the Portuguese to follow the example of the 354 thousand children who so far have participated in the “Fruit Heroes – Healthy School Lunch” project, increasing their daily consumption of fruit by eating at least an extra dose, in the morning or afternoon snack.
From the Algarve, 14 basic schools, colleges and kindergartens, located in the municipalities of Albufeira, participate. Faro, Lagos, Loulé, Olhão, Portimão, Silves, Tavira and Vila do Bispo.
It is a collection of more than 400 photographs created by schools from all districts and autonomous regions, which aim to alert to the low consumption of fruit by the Portuguese population: half of the Portuguese do not meet the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) for intake of at least 5 daily servings of fruit and vegetables, according to data from the National Food and Physical Activity Survey (IAN-AF).
The reduced consumption of these essential foods is indicated by the WHO as one of the ten main risk factors associated with the development of chronic non-communicable diseases, such as obesity.
Mário Silva, president of APCOI, states that “substantially increasing the daily intake of fruit and other plant foods is the main global action to be taken to fight obesity and curb the increase in global warming, as this is the food category with the highest nutritional benefits in the prevention of diseases and whose production tends to be more ecological”.
Thousands of students from all over the country, who are already eating fruit every day at school lunch, accepted APCOI's invitation to participate in this campaign that aims to raise awareness of the importance of this food for health and invite the entire population to choose the best among 400 contest photographs on the site www.heroisdafruta.com
The photographs that, until February 10, manage to garner 200 votes by phone or 2000 likes on Facebook will be finalists and the respective schools will be awarded.
Voting by telephone to elect the finalist photographs is the solidarity aspect of this campaign, reverting 100% of the revenue from each call (cost of €0,60 + VAT) as a donation to offer fruit to children who cannot take a snack to school. Since 2015, APCOI has distributed more than 50.000 pieces of fruit in Portuguese schools for free.
Click here to find out which 14 schools in the Algarve are involved
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