The aim, said the Minister for Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030, Pablo Bustinduy, is to ensure that all children have access to healthy food.

During the presentation of the study, data on which was already provided last September, the minister has advanced some of the contents that will be included in the royal decree on school canteens on which he is working with other ministries to tackle, he said, the challenges that this ALADINO Study puts on the table. The main one, he stressed, is to tackle the inequality reflected in the study, as its data show that children from lower-income families have more problems with excess weight because they consume more sugary drinks and less fruit and vegetables daily.

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Royal decree on school canteens will ensure daily consumption of fruit and vegetables and ban sugary drinks at mealtimes

For this reason, Bustinduy announced that this royal decree will urge all schools to offer fruit and vegetables every day to their pupils and will prohibit the consumption of sugary drinks during meals.

According to the ALADINO Study, which collects data from 2023 on the population between 6 and 9 years of age, only a third of families consider that the food served in their schools is of good quality. This is one of the most relevant conclusions of the report, the minister stressed, together with the data on excess weight in the child population. This excess weight has been reduced by 4.5% overall, the largest drop in the historical series, but it continues to affect more than a third of pupils. Thus, 36.1% are still overweight (20.2% overweight and 15.9% obese).

This situation is particularly worrying in families earning less than 18,000 euros a year, where excess child weight affects almost half (46.7%) of the children in these families, compared to 29.2% in families earning more than 30,000 euros. In this respect, the study shows that overweight and obesity is progressively increasing in households with difficulties in making ends meet and when one of the parents is not in paid work.

As causes of this situation, the data obtained illustrate that, in families with an income of fewer than 18,000 euros, pupils have a lower daily consumption of fruit and vegetables than those belonging to families with an income of more than 30,000 euros (36.4% vs. 53.6% and 19.2% vs. 29.3%, respectively). They are also the ones who have less often more than a drink for breakfast every day (61% vs. 78%). On the other hand, children from lower-income families have an eightfold increase in the consumption of sugary drinks, with 7.8% drinking them more than three days a week compared to 0.9%.

To tackle this situation, Pablo Bustinduy said that schools have a very important role to play in ensuring that every pupil has access to a balanced, quality diet. ‘In a democracy and an advanced economy like Spain’s, children’s diet and health cannot depend on where they are born,’ said Bustinduy.

The minister also considers that school canteens are the right place to intervene because, according to the data provided by this ALADINO Study, 49.5% of pupils usually eat their main meal in the canteen, and 54% have breakfast at the school itself every day. The report also shows that most families (70.4%) believe that the school canteen makes it easier for their children to have a healthy diet, even though only 32.5% believe that the food offered at their school is of high quality.

With these data, Pablo Bustinduy has stated that one of the objectives of the royal decree (officially called ‘for the promotion of healthy and sustainable food in schools’) will be to transfer to all school canteens the standards set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) about children’s food. In addition to guaranteeing the daily consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables and avoiding the consumption of sugary drinks at mealtimes, the regulation will also ensure that all school canteens, regardless of their ownership, offer quality meat and fish, and increase the amount of pulses and cereals on their menus. The minister also pointed out that the royal decree will focus on short production circuits and local foodstuffs to gain access to more sustainable, quality products that promote local economies.

Screens and physical activity
Another important finding of the ALADINO Study is that family income is also a determining factor when it comes to acquiring habits and accessing certain activities. For example, children from lower-income families do less sport in extracurricular activities than those from higher-income families (68.7% compared to 88.6%, a difference of 20 points).

On the other hand, exposure to screens is higher in lower-income families. The percentage of children in these families who watch two or more hours of screen time a day is almost twice as high as in families with an income of over 30,000 euros (41.4% and 22.8%), which, in addition to reducing physical activity, exposes them to more advertisements about unhealthy eating.

The ALADINO study and the European situation
Spain’s 4.5% drop in children overweight is one of the largest recorded among WHO European countries since 2019. Even so, Spain is still the sixth most overweight country (it was third in 2019) and seventh in obesity (fourth in the previous edition).

Study details
The ALADINO study obtained its data after direct measurements of the weight and height of 12,678 children and after questionnaires to their families and schools. Students from 296 schools in all the autonomous communities and cities took part in the study.

Also present at the presentation of the study were Javier Padilla, Secretary of State for Health; Ana María López-Santacruz, Executive Director of the AESAN; and Cristina Recuero, Secretary of the Nutrition Observatory and Obesity Study of the AESAN.