More Than Half of Portuguese Adults Are Overweight, and the Nutritionists' Chief Blames Politics

More than half of Portugal's adults are now overweight or obese, and the head of the country's nutritionists says the blame lies squarely with political inaction.

Speaking on Friday, 8 August, Liliana Sousa, bastonária (president) of the Ordem dos Nutricionistas (Order of Nutritionists), said she was "not surprised" by the latest obesity figures from the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE, Statistics Portugal). She pointed to political decision-makers for a persistent failure to promote healthier diets, warning that today's inaction will translate into far higher disease-treatment costs tomorrow.

As an example of a missed opportunity, she cited the rejected proposal for a zero rate of IVA (VAT) on essential food products, voted down in Parliament on 10 April. Lowering the price of healthy staples, nutritionists argue, is one of the few levers with a proven population-wide effect.

The numbers behind her warning come from the 2025 Inquérito Nacional de Saúde (INS, National Health Survey). It found that 57.1% of people aged 18 and over were overweight or obese — some 1.7 million adults living with obesity and 3.8 million residents classed as overweight.

The burden is heaviest in middle age. Among those aged 45 to 64, roughly 679,100 people (21.4%, above the national average) were obese, and about 1.4 million (43%) were in the pre-obesity range. But younger cohorts are not spared: 6.5% of 18-to-24-year-olds were already obese and 20.4% pre-obese, rising to 12.3% and 33.1% respectively among those aged 25 to 34.

The geography is uneven. The Azores recorded the highest obesity rate, at 26.6%, while the North had the lowest obesity rate, 14.8%, yet the highest share of pre-obesity, at 42.9% — a sign of how widely excess weight is spread even where the most severe cases are fewer.

The survey also mapped the habits behind the figures. Only 40.6% of respondents ate vegetables or salad every day, and 5.3 million people aged 15 and over said they do not exercise regularly. On alcohol, 1.5 million people (15.3%) reported drinking daily, a habit far more common among men (23.2%) than women (7.9%).

Public-health specialists have long argued that obesity is not simply a matter of individual willpower but of the environment people live in — the price, marketing and availability of food, the walkability of neighbourhoods, and the time and money families have for cooking and exercise. That is the case Sousa is pressing on the government: without policy that shapes those conditions, she argues, the survey's next edition is unlikely to read any better.