A study by TGI Marktest concluded that 50.5% of the Portuguese admitted to having been to a fast food outlet at least once in the past two months.
This equates to more than 4.3 million Portuguese resorting to a fast food restaurant, and the majority of respondents who answered ‘yes’ unsurprisingly are at the younger end of the scale.
"This habit is especially common among young people, where nearly three out of four individuals between 15 to 44 years consumed fast food meals in the last 12 months," reads the statement sent to newsrooms.
Despite Lisbon’s attempts at positioning itself as the centre of Portugal’s gastronomic heartland, the fast food habit has taken hold in the capital and it is "individuals of the higher social classes" that are the worst offenders.
"Of those Portuguese who reported consuming meals at fast food restaurants, 47% said that they do at least once a month."
Obesity affects both adults and children and the stats for Portugal are worrying, according to David Carvalho who as president of the Portuguese Society for the Study of Obesity warned in May that the country now has “a million obese adults” with the number of children classified as obese on the rise.
The World Health Organisation predicts obesity will have become a “major crisis in Europe by 2030” and according to Carvalho,“fatty foods, in terms of providing calories, are cheaper than fruit and vegetables.”
A MacDonalds ‘Big Mac’ weighs in at 549 calories and would take 144 minutes of brisk walking to burn off.
Add large fries at 500 calories and the walk needs to be extended by 139 minutes: add a strawberry sundae and the walk needed to neutralise the calorie onslaught would take you just under 6 hours.
The far healthier Mediterranean diet being promoted from its Algarve birthplace in Tavira was registered in December 2013 as an Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.
One of the missions of the Algarve food movement in recent years has been an increasing defence of regional gastronomy, and the Algarve’s food has its origins in the Mediterranean Diet, according to The Grand Master of the Algarve's Gastronomes José Manuel Alves.
Access to fresh fruit and veg in markets across the Algarve is a plus point as are the many and varied opportunities for exercise.
‘You are what you eat’ and the increasing girth of Portugal's urban fatocracy shows a distain for their own health with long term implications for the country’s medical services.
