Background Preventing childhood obesity is a public health challenge of the twenty-first century and it must be a priority. Governments play a major role in creating and supporting a healthy school environment and should prioritise actions to improve children’s health. Sintra Grows Healthy aims to promote healthy lifestyles to prevent childhood obesity and improve children’s health-related quality of life and social and emotional skills, through the development of a school evidence-based and sustainable model. Methods This protocol describes a quasi-experimental design and community-based participatory research. The participants included in the study are the school community of Portuguese public primary schools from the municipality of Sintra. Data will be collected on demographic and socio-economic characterization, nutritional status, eating habits and behaviours, physical activity, sedentary behaviours and sleep, health-related quality of life, and social and emotional skills. Discussion There is evidence to support interventions in school settings as strategies for obesity prevention. Up-to-date homogeneous and community-based interventions for preventing childhood obesity are lacking, therefore Sintra Grows Healthy intends to fill this gap. Furthermore, Sintra Grows Healthy aims to contribute with relevant scientific findings that will allow the development of better strategies for policymakers and society to manage this major public health problem.

School meals present several cost benefits overtime at the short, medium, and long term for individuals and society. This cross-sectional study aims to analyse the nutritional composition and evaluate the adequacy of school lunches. One hundred and fifty-eight samples were collected and analysed from 10 primary schools in Sintra’s municipality, served during one week. On average, energy (27.7% daily energetic requirements and carbohydrate (48.1%) contents did not reach the reference values, and the content of protein (19.5%) exceeded the reference value (p < 0.05). The mean total fat (28.8%) and saturated fatty acids (5.4%) content complied with the recommendations. The mean salt (1.7 g) and dietary fibre (8.3 g) content exceeded the reference value but did not differ significantly from the recommendations. Addressing school canteens is crucial, not only in a nutritional approach, but also as an opportunity to achieve healthier, sustainable, and accessible food systems, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals 2030. We highlighted the importance of evaluating evidence-based practices and disseminated practice-based evidence regarding the adequacy of school lunches.

Objective: Describe the process of development and implementation of Health at the Table - a food literacy curriculum for primary school aged children. Design: Through a community-based research process, Health at the table development and implementation took place in four stages: exploratory study, production, implementation, and monitoring. Setting: Primary schools of Sintra’s municipality, Portugal. Participants: Children (6 to 10 years), teachers, school staff and children’s legal guardians of three primary schools during the pilot project and eight primary schools in the second year. Results: During the needs assessment phase, 99.1% (n=341) of the children’s legal guardians, 100% (n=34) of the teachers and 100% (n=19) of the school staff considered that the school plays an important or very important role in children’s food literacy (stage 1). During the pilot project, a manual with 60 session plans was developed (stage 2). In the second year Health at the Table was implemented by 72 trained teachers during one school year (stage 3). Most of the teachers agreed that the curriculum was appropriate (69.2%) and that children developed health, wellness/well-being, and environmental skills (83.1%). Most of the children said they had learned about healthy eating (86.3%) and claimed to eat healthier since the Health at the Table implementation (58.9%) (stage 4). Conclusions: Health at the Table is a food literacy curriculum that can be reproduced in similar contexts in a sustainable way. The need to combine educational strategies with a healthy school food environment is reinforced to increase effectiveness in tackling childhood obesity.

The prevalence of childhood overweight has increased considerably in the past three decades and there is evidence that childhood obesity can persist into adulthood. A simple tool to identify relevant risk factors may alert families and prevent overweight and obesity. This study aims to develop a pre-school screening tool to assess the risk of childhood obesity. Child anthropometric measurements and several risk factors for childhood obesity factors were obtained. The effect of the variables on the outcome of obesity (defined as increased anthropometry-estimated adiposity) was assessed by binary logistic regression analyses. The identified variables were submitted for expert panel validation and combined for the tool development. A total of 304 children were included. Eight items were included in the tool. A higher score of the tool indicates a greater risk for obesity in childhood with the cutoff point set at 0. The tool sensitivity for obesity was 95%, specificity was 74.4%, the positive predictive value was 37.3%, and negative predictive value was 98.9%. The Risk of childhood Obesity In the Community (RisObIn.Com) tool is proposed to be a comprehensive tool to identify children at high risk for late childhood obesity at admission to primary school. Further studies are needed to assess the performance of the tool.