Concept of School – What defines it
The idea of a School is a consolidated construct built over time. One can speak of a School when the professionals trained in a certain space have achieved significant national and international prestige with their own way of thinking and doing, with a shared sensibility associated with the formative space. Another characteristic of a school and its narrative as a "school" is the notion of a legacy and generational continuity supported by the consecutive succession of professionals trained there who have made their mark in a particular area of work over time. This generational continuity and construction of thought with common affinities, however, shares a rejection of the standardization of a single way of thinking. This idea of school has been mentioned in relation to the "Porto School of Architecture" by authors such as Pedro Bandeira (Porto School: Side B) and recently taken up again by Pedro Baía. Moreover, the questioning of the possibility of democratic access to knowledge and experience were very characteristic of the thinking of the founding fathers of what we will henceforth call the "Porto School of Nutrition".
Although several conditions for the existence of a common way of thinking were created from the founding of the Nutrition Course in 1976 at the University of Porto, and continued in the following decades, the collection of this common knowledge by the main personalities who made up the institution was rarely done in a conscious and programmatic way. For this reason, we will not mention names here (except for the founding fathers), but rather the central lines and critical thinking that underpin the idea of a School of Nutrition in Porto and the conditions for what we consider to be its existence. Others will certainly do this more personalized historical work in the future.
Conditions for the existence of a school designated as the Porto School of Nutrition
In the 1970s, unique and exceptional conditions came together at the University of Porto, allowing for the emergence of a new way of thinking and even a new profession in the field of nutritional sciences. However, we cannot forget that even before, and throughout the 20th century, the city of Porto had witnessed social movements in the area of food and had been home to truly unique personalities in the history of nutrition who perhaps help to understand why it was in Porto that people dared to do things differently. Without going into detail, it is worth highlighting the birth in Porto of the first vegetarian community in Portugal and its monthly magazine "O Vegetariano" (The Vegetarian), which was published uninterruptedly between 1909 and 1935. In 1936, the results of the first surveys on the eating habits of the Portuguese population, conducted by Mendes Corrêa, Director of the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Porto, were published in Porto. Later, between 1954 and 1967, Francisco Gonçalves Ferreira created and directed a branch of the Higher Institute of Hygiene in Porto, where he established a school of thought and laid the foundations for modern knowledge of food composition in his Food Hygiene and Bromatology Laboratory. This laboratory would, a few decades later, become one of the teaching locations for the first students of the newly created Nutrition Course.
These and other technical and scientific conditions may have contributed to the creation of the Nutrition course at the University of Porto. Or not. Perhaps this new profession simply resulted from the historical, social, and political circumstances of the time, which we will describe later. We will probably never know. But we do know some premises, defined more or less freely, that are generally associated with the idea of a school of thought. And that are present in the training of nutritionists at the University of Porto.
a) The existence of a School presupposes its association with a specific technical or scientific field that gains recognition at the national and international levels
The teaching of Nutritional Sciences and the profession of nutritionist began in Portugal at the University of Porto and, from its inception, was based on an innovative teaching model that integrated social and biomedical sciences. It clearly identified the act of eating as a social and cultural act, creating a multidisciplinary school to understand it, although its foundation is in health sciences. In a way, the Porto School of Nutrition created a specific way of looking at nutrition, created a new profession – the nutritionist – and contributed to its recognition, both nationally and internationally.
It was on May 31, 1976, that, by joint decree of the Ministry of Education and Scientific Research and the Ministry of Social Affairs (Decree 46/76 of March 31, 1976), the Bachelor's degree course in Nutritionism was created, under the auspices of the Rectorate of the University of Porto, with a duration of 3 years. The training of "senior technicians specialized in Nutritional Sciences" in Portugal had a threefold objective: to enable intervention in the field of public health in conjunction with the central services of other Ministries – such as Social Affairs, Education or Agriculture – in solving "problems of rational food production and distribution"; in health services, especially at the hospital level, "to guide and coordinate, in collaboration with dietitians and doctors, normal and dietary nutrition"; and, finally, to carry out research "in research centers on nutrition, industries and related fields". The initial curriculum design for the first Bachelor's degree in Nutrition most likely reflected the need to "promote the development of rational eating habits and, at the same time, increase self-sufficiency in essential foods through disciplined production, and introduce favorable changes in consumption."
The Porto School of Nutrition is associated with teaching and research in the field of Nutritional Sciences. The University of Porto, through its Nutrition course, was the first in Portugal to define teaching in this area and separate it from the dietetics teaching that existed in Portugal until the mid-1970s, which was the prevailing teaching model at the European level until then. The nutritionists graduating from this bachelor's degree at the University of Porto will be the first in the Iberian Peninsula, and very likely in Europe, to break with the predominantly hospital-based, assistance-oriented training model that began in the United States in 1927. In those early days of the profession, the then 'dietitians' had a function very much focused on providing meals in hospitals, reporting to medical and nursing staff. Dietary therapy consisted essentially of altering the consistency of food, and initial training was given by teachers from the field of home economics. This technical specialization, geared towards the practice of individual actions in the manipulation of hospital diets, appeared in Portugal in 1955 through Decree No. 15231 of the DG of 26/01 and progressively evolved into a career as a Diagnostic and Therapeutic Technician, assisting in complementary diagnostic and therapeutic services at the hospital level, giving rise to the career of dietitian. Although this training model became widespread in Europe through different technical training programs in dietetics, it was in Latin America that the nutritionist began to be referenced for the first time.
It was in Brazil, starting in the 1940s, that a social policy marked by welfare assistance emerged, a period in which the first Nutrition courses appeared. Nutritionists then differentiated themselves from dietitians, intervening in the community and becoming an additional instrument in alleviating social tensions and combating situations of food insecurity. In 1946, Josué de Castro's work "Geography of Hunger" was published, emphasizing the socioeconomic origins of hunger, and in 1951 the book "Geopolitics of Hunger" became a historical and political landmark in matters of food and population, impacting the creation of the Nutrition Course in Porto. This model of professional capable of intervening directly in the community and empowering citizens, able to understand that the determinants of food consumption develop outside the area of health, requiring mastery of other knowledge, reappeared in Portugal with the creation of the Nutrition Course. However, we do not know for sure the Brazilian influence or even the African experience (namely the Mozambican one) in this process. This ability to work with the community and in a more autonomous way, away from the rigid, doctor-centric hospital hierarchy, allows the profession to consolidate its autonomy in its development and also appeals to another unique aspect of nutritionists: their ability to work in interdisciplinary teams, a result, in part, of their multidisciplinary training.
Nutrition education (no longer just dietetics, as was done at the European level), understood as the teaching of the various nutritional sciences and with the capacity to integrate these multiple areas of knowledge in intersecting and articulating fields, has made nutritionists trained at the Porto School of Nutrition professionals characterized by their great ability to see the world of food in a more comprehensive way and to integrate and lead multidisciplinary teams in the health field. This is a less common characteristic among previous dietetics professionals and is one of the great common denominators of this new university training.
Interdisciplinary knowledge is at the heart of nutritionist training in Portugal and at the Porto School of Nutrition. From its inception, the Nutrition course has had very intense collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine for teaching the basic biomedical disciplinary areas, and also with the Faculty of Pharmacy for understanding the composition of foods. It also included social areas in its curriculum to understand how these foods are consumed, given that eating is essentially a cultural act. Throughout its evolution, nutritionist training has also intensely integrated the areas of communication and food education and, later, political science as decisive influencers of eating behavior. Around these disciplinary areas, a body of thought is being built that is slowly being occupied by nutritionists trained within the institution itself, but which needs time and space to assert itself.
These areas needed teaching time to gain autonomy, critical mass, and a body of knowledge. This happened when undergraduate training for nutritionists abandoned the bachelor's degree model and became a 5-year program. This made it truly distinct from the rest of the training for European dietitians, who, meanwhile, maintained a 3-year program. This period of affirmation of Nutrition education in Portugal compared to the rest of Europe was, in a way, interrupted with the adoption of the Bologna Declaration. This created a degree structure based essentially on two cycles, with different profiles and orientations, according to individual and academic objectives and based on professional practice and employability. In this way, the basic training time was reduced, but the interdisciplinary nature of the training was maintained. Despite the Bologna reform, FCNAUP maintained its interdisciplinary basic training and a vision of intervention in society, distinguishing it from other national and foreign training programs. However, all institutions that trained nutritionists in Portugal followed the teaching model created by FCNAUP, and the training model recognized by the current Order of Nutritionists was, in a way, inspired by the training model created by FCNAUP. During this period, Nutritional Sciences superseded Dietetics, and currently only the profession of nutritionist is recognized. We believe that the technical competence of the nutritionists trained by FCNAUP contributed greatly to this path.
A school of thought does not necessarily have to be a slow, multi-generational construction (but a long life will require it). It can be programmatic, it can militantly assert its difference, its worldview, its Weltanschauung, generally through critical opposition to a previous situation, with the "school" emerging as the bearer of a new paradigm. In the case of the Porto School of Nutrition, the fact that it occurred at the turning point of a decisive chapter in the construction of our democracy and at the moment of the birth of a new ambition for the improvement of the health of all citizens, may help to explain this worldview and this difference from what existed previously.
b) The existence of a school shapes a style close to a certain formal and linguistic imaginary related to the work of one or more reference figures
The Porto School of Nutrition embodies a style closely aligned with a certain formal and linguistic imaginary, related to the work of one or more key figures such as Emílio Peres and Norberto Teixeira Santos. Its discourse and stance are marked by a strong social awareness, present throughout Emílio Peres's work, and by a profound multidisciplinary technical knowledge evident in the work of Norberto Teixeira Santos and other founders of the then Nutrition Course, such as Francisco Gonçalves Ferreira.
Following the April 1974 revolution, and more specifically at the University of Porto, exceptional conditions were created for the emergence of higher-level nutrition technician training in Portugal. Within these conditions, we can highlight, on the one hand, the perceived need in the post-revolutionary country to modify access to and consumption of food for a large majority of the population. This need strongly motivated the decision to train specialists in the field of nutrition. On the other hand, the excessive number of students in the first year of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Porto in the 1975/76 academic year, and the need to channel this excessive number of students into training that was, in some way, complementary or related to the medical course, contributed to the emergence of the Nutrition Studies course. At the time, specific nutrition teaching was practically non-existent in medical schools, not only in Portugal but also in other parts of the world. During this period, it is important to highlight the role of Emílio Peres, a physician and one of the first professors at FCNAUP, who was vice-president of the Northern Regional Section of the Order of Physicians between 1973 and 1975. He was a member of the national commission for the restructuring of medical education and the commission of representatives from the three Faculties of Medicine that drafted recommendations for the training of health professionals, aiming to respond to the challenge arising from the April 25, 1974 revolution of "more and better health for all". In this context, courses in Dentistry, Nutrition, Environmental Sciences, and the training of Physical Education teachers were created during this period, as well as the establishment of retraining for auxiliary nurses and higher education for nurses, in addition to the creation of regular secondary courses for senior health technicians. On June 25, 1979 (the date of Bento de Jesus Caraça's death), and within this idealized environment of "health and culture for all," the Popular University of Porto (UPP) was created by several personalities linked to the University of Porto, such as Ruy Luís Gomes, the first rector of the University of Porto after April 25th, Óscar Lopes, director of the Faculty of Arts (1974-1977), Armando de Castro, the first director of the Faculty of Economics of Porto, and Emílio Peres. Several professors from the Faculty of Nutrition of the University of Porto (FCNAUP) would teach at the UPP. These key figures of the UPP and their formal vision are certainly present in shaping a worldview that was felt at the School of Nutrition of Porto and among some of its founders.
Community intervention and the need to rethink this intervention are part of a certain formal and linguistic imaginary related to the work of the leading figures of the Porto School of Nutrition. In the case of nutritional sciences, the issues of lexicon and grammar of nutritional sciences are partially constructed here by Emílio Peres, who was attentive to language issues and its proper use. For this reason, he actively participated in the elaboration of the Luso-Brazilian Encyclopedia of Culture published by Verbo, where he introduced several terms related to nutrition. Words such as "Macronutrients," "Nutrients or nutrient substances," "Complantix," "Refectory complex," "Conglomerate of metabolic diseases," "Cafeteria food," "Rational nutrition," and "Food waste" are now part of the linguistic heritage of nutritionists.
Beyond Emílio Peres and Norberto Teixeira Santos, it is worth citing an excerpt from an article by Francisco Gonçalves Ferreira, director of CEN – Center for Nutrition Studies and professor in the then Nutrition Course, entitled “The Orientation of Food and Nutrition Problems in Portugal”. This text, published in Volume IV of the Archives of the National Institute of Health in 1980, reflected well this feeling of doing things differently and of contesting a certain indifference towards food and nutrition issues – “Although the Constitution contains no reference to food or the country's food policy, nor has there been any concern on the part of successive Portuguese governments with this issue, unlike what is happening in the civilized world, CEN considers it urgent to establish, in our country, coordinated measures for the production of necessary foods and their consumption, and for food information and education at the national level, framing them within the set of interventions that could and should constitute a clearly defined and structured food and nutrition policy under governmental responsibility”. Fortunately, years later, FCNAUP alumni would fulfill this desire.
c) The existence of a school presupposes the existence of certain identity traits that perpetuate over time, although adapting to a changing reality
The Porto School of Nutrition has, from very early on, adopted a broad-based training program geared towards community action and improving nutritional status. It is multidisciplinary in nature, but never loses its characteristics as a health profession, with a strong technical focus and biomedical terminology. This identity and consistency are evident in the evolution of the School's curriculum and teaching model.
In the case of the School of Nutrition, some aspects of its identity should be highlighted. We will delve into three, but others could be considered.
First and foremost, the importance of food and nutrition education in the training and subsequent practice of nutritionists graduating from this institution. This intention seems evident and is confirmed through the analysis of the Nutrition Course curriculum since its inception in 1977. Since then, and for practically three decades, training in the area has been strongly linked to the idea of training professionals to produce information and materials that serve as tools to assist citizens in making decisions. This would empower them to expand their power of choice and decision-making. Between the academic years of 1976/1977 and 1987/1988, the first years of training, there was always a perceived need to include Communication and Education Sciences in the teaching of Nutrition at FCNAUP for social, political, and public intervention reasons. Although this was not always scientifically and pedagogically acknowledged because the political and pedagogical project of FCNAUP was not entirely autonomous from the Rectorate, the course was dependent on it. Also because the description of the political and pedagogical projects of the Faculties did not need to be explicitly stated; and because there was a direct relationship with the Faculty of Medicine that did not facilitate this assertion.
Alongside the beginning of nutritionist training in Portugal, the first proposals for the implementation of a national food policy emerged around the same time. These proposals were centrally led by Professor Francisco Gonçalves Ferreira, who was involved in the creation of the Nutrition Course at the University of Porto and who taught there during its early years. In this context, food education was seen as an integral part of this national food policy, which was to be initiated at that time, and should include information programs "from schools to health services and related institutions, with regular collaboration with the media.".
Between the academic years of 1976/1977 and 1986/1987, a decade elapsed during which the Bachelor's degree course in Nutrition (3 years of undergraduate training) was offered before the approval of the curriculum for the Bachelor's degree in Nutritional Sciences (5 years of undergraduate training). During this initial period, in which the nutritionist slowly established themselves in Portuguese society, the curriculum included a subject called "Legislation and Pedagogy Applied to Nutrition and Professional Ethics," where the areas of communication and food education appeared fleetingly and together for the first time, a path they would follow over the next few decades, at least until the academic year of 2007/2008.
This model gained a new dimension from 2007 onwards in the FCNAUP curricula, with a clear separation between communication management (through the collection, systematization and communication of information in the Communication curricular unit) and training for effective intervention in the community through pedagogical and transformative education projects (for example in the Communication Project or Community Health curricular units).
In this first decade, the objective of the training program focused on empowering future nutritionists to provide citizens with adequate and accurate information about food, nutrition, and the prevention of nutritional problems. The program structure of this discipline reveals a diversity of areas and themes ranging from issues of effective communication, pedagogy, and teaching to issues of food legislation and professional ethics among health professionals. In parallel, an analysis of the program content and teaching materials of two other undergraduate courses at the time, "Rational Nutrition" and "General and Food Sociology," reveals two distinct schools of thought that would influence the training of future nutritionists in the areas of food education and communication.
On the one hand, there is the idea that the total or partial lack of knowledge on the part of individuals regarding the composition of food and its relationship to health was a determining factor in inadequate consumption, making it necessary to empower future nutritionists to change this situation through high-quality, technically and scientifically based individual approaches. On the other hand, and already in the 1980s, with the beginning of the national food education campaign "Knowing how to eat is knowing how to live," which ran until 1982 and included, among others, a team of five nutritionists from the first Bachelor's degree course in Nutrition at the University of Porto, the aspect of food education also assumed the political and ideological commitment to place the technical and scientific capacity of nutritionists at the service of the most vulnerable social groups in the fight against malnutrition. This commitment is evident in the letter of acceptance that one of the mentors of the food education campaign “Knowing how to eat is knowing how to live”, Dr. Emílio Peres, at the time responsible for the subject of “Rational Nutrition”, sent to the national coordinator of the campaign, Dr. Margarida Gonçalves Pereira: “the underlying reason for my collaboration is linked to my conceptual positioning as a citizen and health professional; and this is defined by the need to promote health as a way to achieve well-being and by the (moreover demonstrable) assumption that correct nutrition is a decisive factor in achieving health (…) these are all aspects of the necessary struggle that I believe are consistent with my ideological position”.
Secondly, the notion of intervention in society and the affirmation of the importance of food in improving the quality of life of populations. This markedly interventionist position, adopted by some lecturers in the Nutrition course and also related to what was being done in the field, outside the institution, constitutes another of the distinctive marks of the training provided at the Porto School of Nutrition, which is precisely a position (sometimes more asserted than others) of intervention in society. The important social role of food and its importance in the well-being of communities is presented very early on, going beyond the idea of food as a mere instrument for generating health. This need to see society's problems through the lens of its relationship with food and the act of eating means that nutrition education transcends and approaches sociological, anthropological, and cultural knowledge, going beyond the mere biomedical relationship between nutrients or their absence and the onset of disease. On the other hand, the often tenuous, but ever-present, notion that access to and consumption of health-promoting food is not only conditioned by consumer knowledge but also by social, economic, and even political conditions, makes the nutritionist a social and political actor. Even if this view has been inconsistent throughout the formative history of the School and runs parallel to the political history of Portuguese society over the last 40 years.
Even recently, due to advancements in the field of informational content, its increasing complexity, the interaction between different types of content, the support platforms of social networks, and the ease of producing and disseminating information to others, it has become possible for nutritionists to simultaneously be consumers, managers, producers, and global disseminators of information on food and nutrition, thus generating change and transformation, encouraging the emergence of individual and collective processes of change. However, this requirement necessitates critical reflection and constant evaluation to be integrated into a training process that, at the university level, is becoming increasingly shorter.
The importance given to the role of nutritionists in food education within the context of health promotion is also reflected in food and nutrition policies in Portugal. The first proposal for the implementation of a national food policy, presented in 1979 by Gonçalves Ferreira, included food education as one of its main measures. Around the same time, the first national food education campaign, "Knowing how to eat is knowing how to live," began. Despite the lack of a true nutritional policy in Portugal since then – and despite the interest and capacity to define a formal food and nutrition policy in Portugal having diminished during the 1990s – food education was perhaps the only area that remained active on the political agenda. Currently, the National Program for the Promotion of Healthy Eating (PNPAS), created in 2012, presents as one of its five general objectives "to inform and empower people in the purchase, preparation, and storage of healthy foods, especially the most disadvantaged groups.".
Thirdly, a high-quality biomedical foundation, its interface with other areas of knowledge without losing sight of a specific identity. In the field of training, Nutrition Science courses tend to exist in universities or research-oriented institutions, and can be found in schools of Ecology, Home Economics, Agriculture, Health Sciences, Medicine, or Public Health. Sometimes, the departments responsible for teaching Nutrition courses present different possible paths: some that focus more on the sciences of nutrition and food; and others that focus more on the application of nutrition (for example, dietetics). For this reason, the composition of course programs and the infrastructure for delivering them may vary between institutions.
In the case of the Porto School of Nutrition, the decisive merit was that (in attempting to divide a given phenomenon to study its constituent parts) it did not lose sight of the importance of the whole, developing and fulfilling the role of nutrition as a reservoir of integrative science between the parts and the whole. Within this context of integration, the architecture of the core knowledge characteristic of nutrition was always ensured, in order to maintain the academic exclusivity of nutritional sciences and provide a certain degree of common characteristics and cohesion among professionals, thus ensuring the future of this scientific field.
The foundation of knowledge in nutrition can thus intertwine with knowledge from other disciplines such as biochemistry, organic chemistry, epidemiology, food science, genetics, immunology, physiology, or psychosociology, and interface with disciplines that represent the new frontiers of discovery and research in nutrition, such as cell biology, pharmacology, or pathology, without losing its identity.
The fact that the nutrition course then established itself as a broad-based university program (even if initially dependent on the Rectorate of the University of Porto), moving away from the more focused, polytechnic or purely technical dietetics training that prevailed in continental Europe until then, was decisive for the affirmation of the Porto School of Nutrition. However, it is worth emphasizing that this broad-based training did not neglect a very demanding clinical training. The disciplinary areas of clinical nutrition, or more specifically, pediatric clinical nutrition, initially taught by professors linked to the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto in a highly demanding and high-quality environment such as the São João University Hospital Centre, were crucial. Also, from early on, nutritionists gained their place within multidisciplinary hospital teams, in this and other hospitals in the country, thus contributing to this professional differentiation.
We still recognize today that the future academic challenges of nutritional sciences will interface with other disciplinary areas, and that nutrition occupies an important niche as a cross-disciplinary discipline integrating knowledge from the life sciences. At the same time, many of the academic challenges and some of the job opportunities in nutritional sciences will occur in domains that interface with other areas of knowledge. The last 20 years, for example, have been accompanied by important advances in the field of molecular research that have allowed human biology an approach capable of identifying molecules involved in biological events, examining them in their most elementary form or in simple systems. In addition to this type of approach, it will be necessary to continue providing students with the skills to integrate that set of events into the functioning of multiple organs and metabolic systems, training them in broader areas, from metabolic regulation to epidemiology and behavior.
The next challenge will be to adapt knowledge about the functioning of the human body's metabolic systems to new changes in food systems imposed by climate change. This will require a review of consumption models that have been stable for hundreds of years. Again, a humanistic and broad-based education will be crucial in this evolution.
d) In the broader cultural assimilation of the designation "Porto School of Nutrition," a simplification phenomenon occurs, giving rise to the configuration of a recognizable style and brand
Nutrition education at the University of Porto has always combined essential technical knowledge with a vision of nutrition committed to transforming social reality. FCNAUP (Faculty of Nutrition, Food and Nutrition of the University of Porto) emerged in 1976, designed to be a multidisciplinary higher education institution with strong links to the health sciences (particularly medicine and pharmacy), but with a core component linked to social intervention, connecting to sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, and education. This was partly due to the historical context in which it was created after the 25th of April revolution and the need for a more interventionist approach to society. This specificity gave shape to a unique language and style, visible in distinct areas such as the creation of iconic communication tools like the Food Wheel, intervention in collective feeding programs, or in sports where a very specific form of intervention was developed, or in local government where FCNAUP faculty and alumni defined, in a way, a very particular way of being and acting. These practices later became widespread and form the basis of the current intervention model in these areas.
Whether intentionally or not, the institution's trajectory, along with that of its professors, researchers, and students, has foresaw from very early on that nutritional sciences are an area of tension between the natural and social sciences. This tension regarding the object of nutrition as a health field can be found at its extremes: on the one hand, metabolic knowledge as a biological process; on the other, concerns about problems stemming from social inequalities, which find expression in the egalitarian policies of the post-April 25th period and in human rights. Between these two extremes lies a continuum of approaches and ways of producing knowledge based on distinct guiding principles. Individualized health approaches, which hold citizens responsible for their food choices and observe and engage with them individually, have coexisted from very early on in the Faculty's discourse with public health approaches, which work at the level of populations and communities, attempting to make healthy options accessible and readily available. This vision of specialized individual intervention, in addition to other specialized interventions, alongside an interdisciplinary community-based approach, is quite distinct from the dietary intervention supporting medical personnel, which was very characteristic of the European schools of dietetics existing until then. And it defines the thinking of founding figures such as Francisco Gonçalves Ferreira, Emílio Peres, or Norberto Teixeira Santos.
This recognizable brand will endure in the way professionals trained here intervene and in the multidisciplinary models that support many subsequent interventions in the field of nutrition at the national level. At a collective level, this unique language is well represented by the Food Wheel. In Portugal, an Interministerial Group was created in 1977 by a joint decree of the Ministries of Agriculture and Fisheries, Commerce and Tourism, Education and Scientific Research, and Social Affairs, to outline a food education program. In addition to representatives from the aforementioned Ministries, this group also included members of the FAO National Commission. In order to achieve the proposed objectives, the campaign "Knowing how to eat is knowing how to live" was created, and three major projects were defined: the Awareness Project, the Schools Project, and the Regions Project. Within the scope of the Schools Project, considered one of the most promising and important of the campaign, various materials were published for distribution in schools, including posters with the Food Wheel. This was chosen by the campaign as the national symbol for food education. In 1979, 170,000 copies were initially published, and since then, it has been the most frequently used educational material in this area by professionals in the health and education fields. Dr. Emílio Peres was one of those initially involved in this project. The Portuguese Wheel, unlike the French Wheel on which it was based, makes mention, albeit indirectly, of the quantities of each group that should be consumed. It is the size of each slice of the circle that indicates the proportions of each group that should be included in the daily ration. These are proportions based on the weight with which the foods of each group should contribute to a healthy and balanced diet. This pioneering idea was introduced into the Portuguese Wheel by Professor Gonçalves Ferreira and later adopted in the Food Wheels of countries such as Sweden and the United States of America. In the following decades, the Portuguese Wheel was reformulated by teachers, researchers, and alumni of the Porto School of Nutrition. Later, the Mediterranean Food Wheel was developed, adapting it to promote the Mediterranean dietary pattern. The material also abandons paper and easily adapts to digital media in the 21st century. Today, the Food Wheel has become the most iconic material in national food education.
In the area of professional development and the recognizable brand of FCNAUP, we could choose several case studies. For example, in collective catering, professionals from FCNAUP developed specific coordination, management, and leadership skills for this area of activity, creating an original intervention model. In the context of food safety and quality and satisfaction management, they were the first to define processes and models of action that became a benchmark in the sector. They were also pioneers in the context of collective catering and nutritional sciences of concepts such as integrated management systems, strategy and decision-making support tools, logistics processes and resource management, sustainability, innovation, market trends, among others, which created a very distinctive identity for this area of activity that remains to this day. The differentiating factor of these professionals was to integrate nutritional sciences into the numerous contexts of food service that persist to this day.
In the field of sports nutrition, a true school of sports nutrition has been built at FCNAUP (Faculty of Nutrition, Food and Nutrition of the University of Porto). Today, this school is spread throughout the country and abroad, making FCNAUP-trained nutritionists leaders in this area. In sports nutrition, the "food first" approach, prioritizing a deep understanding of the "food-nutrient-performance" interaction over an excessively biochemical and supplementation-based approach, characterizes the intervention of FCNAUP-trained nutritionists. This is also the foundation of much of the research conducted here. This intervention model also allows for better adherence and response from athletes (especially elite athletes) and other stakeholders in the world of sports, thus contributing to its national and international success.
This desire to intervene in and modify society from a nutritional standpoint is symbolically represented by the intervention of nutritionists from the Porto School of Nutrition in local government. The decentralization of the State, enshrined in the 1976 Constitution, allowed for the creation of legislation granting new powers and responsibilities to local authorities. Between 1976 and 1999, several legal instruments were produced in this regard, but it was in 1999, through Laws No. 159/99 of September 14 and No. 169/99 of September 18, amended and republished by Law No. 5-A/2002 of January 11, that the framework for the transfer of powers and responsibilities to local authorities was established, as well as the delimitation of the intervention of central and local administration, thus implementing the principles of administrative decentralization and the autonomy of local government. Law 159/99 enabled nutritionists, possessing an interdisciplinary and comprehensive vision encompassing various areas of expertise, to identify and intervene in areas where greater health benefits could be achieved. This applied not only to health and education, where local authorities gained the capacity to build and manage facilities and participate in defining their respective local health and education policies, for example, but also to other areas such as social action or consumer protection, where a great deal of work remained to be done. This opened up a new area with great potential for intervention and change in society, where nutritionists could make a difference.
In this sense, several municipalities recruit nutritionists during this period, with their primary area of work almost always being primary education (1st cycle) and kindergartens, as well as the management of school canteens. This progressive intervention and consolidation of nutritionists in the daily work of municipalities in Portugal is visible in the projects and works presented since 2006, when FCNAUP (Faculty of Nutrition and Food Sciences of the University of Porto) began organizing the Portuguese Congress on Food and Municipalities and started mapping the local output of municipal nutritionists, simultaneously producing the theoretical basis for this intervention. Today, we can identify a growing demand for projects that link local resources (whether human, natural, and local production resources, or even historical resources) with the pursuit of improving the nutritional and food well-being of populations, generating a huge diversity of interventions that are now also beginning to be evaluated for their real value in improving the well-being of those affected by them.
(e) The professionals trained at this School have achieved significant national and international prestige with a common way of doing and thinking associated with the training environment
Professionals trained at FCNAUP over the last few decades now hold leadership positions in various national health services, in several ministries, research centers, and are directors of many of the undergraduate and postgraduate programs that have emerged in this area. Many of its professionals also hold or have held prominent positions in various international institutions, from university teaching to the World Health Organization or the Davos Forum.
There are numerous examples of FCNAUP alumni leading processes and achieving prestige at national and international levels. At the national level, we can cite the presence of the first nutritionists from FCNAUP in the Ministries of Education and Agriculture. They have held coordination and responsibility positions in the area of food and nutrition in various Regional Health Administrations, both on the mainland and islands. And more recently, they have directed several services within the National Health Service (SNS). This presence of nutritionists in national health services, particularly in primary healthcare, remains uncommon in other European countries.
In 2007, FCNAUP alumni were involved in the creation of the Platform Against Obesity at the Directorate-General of Health, representing a first comprehensive and intersectoral approach aimed at combating obesity. In 2012, they were involved in the creation of a Program for the Promotion of Healthy Eating in Portugal, initiating an investment in food policies in Portugal, and in 2017, the Intersectoral Strategy for the Promotion of Healthy Eating was created, under the technical coordination of nutritionists from FCNAUP. This strategy always has a strong focus on intervention in society, understanding food consumption as heavily influenced by various sectors of the State, the private sector, and civil society. Within this framework, various integrated and intersectoral actions are developed, advocating the principle of "health in all policies," considering the fight against social inequalities in access to healthy food and health as one of the major challenges of this strategy.
This discursive and ideological continuity is also visible in scientific societies and professional associations where this mark endures. For example, the Portuguese Society of Nutrition and Food Sciences (SPCNA), which has always included a vast majority of FCNAUP alumni and professors in its governing bodies and has a long history of research and action on community issues, or the Portuguese Nutrition Association (APN), which has always been led by FCNAUP alumni, has marked its activity with a strong component of service to the community and social awareness in its vision of service to the community, which translates into a huge diversity of information and education interventions, and with a strong editorial line. The same is true of the Order of Nutritionists itself, strongly marked by FCNAUP alumni with an appreciable social intervention beyond its professional regulation activity.
Despite the diversity of roles and positions they hold, most of these former FCNAUP students assume leadership roles characterized by interdisciplinarity, where issues of community intervention are often present.
Conclusion
For certain authors, such as Jorge Figueira, who have considered the concepts of "School" and who understand "school in the sense of a particular intersection—of people, context, time—that touches a nerve, responds to demands that are in the air and gives them form and meaning," the Porto School of Nutrition can be understood as a space for thought where there has always been an attempt to respond to these demands. This involves a need to understand the relationship between nutrients and the human cell, or between food and human life, without ever neglecting the understanding that this relationship needs to be read and studied in light of the human and social dimension of the act of eating, namely the deprivation of access to food. This is what makes the Porto School of Nutrition unique: it is a humanist and interventionist school focused on society, although with a biomedical experimental basis.
This desire to modify (for the better) the society around them, and not just the individuals they assist, characterizes much of the way of thinking of professionals trained at the Porto School of Nutrition, although, in reality, the idea of school is always a construct, a fiction, a narrative based on interpretations, desires, proposals, characters, and even mythologies.
This exploratory and preliminary text is published at a time of a new phase in the life of the Porto School of Nutrition, namely, on the eve of the opening of its own building, which will certainly be the home of Portuguese nutritionists. A school is better built when it has its own home. Teaching, learning, its languages, and familiarity with a certain way of being and seeing the world are largely shaped by personal experiences and the observation of others. "Presence" is essential in the learning process. A home calls for a space for action where all members of a community of thought resolve, through dialogue, issues that concern the whole of society. This space, which is public and welcomes everyone, is a place where problems are identified and interpreted. Where tensions are experienced and conflict is transformed into debate, replicating the public sphere and an ethical and scientific way of being, with its own timeframe that is intended to be continued. And this is fundamental for the generational passing of the torch among nutritionists, far from the sound bites that circulate on digital networks today, conditioning scientific discussion.
However, the recognition of "a way of thinking and doing" is a process that will certainly take time and should be marked by successive debates, reflections and conflicts, as well as exclusions, consensuses and contradictions. This will, in essence, be the richness and raison d'être of a School. That is, when it itself originates debate, raises doubts and generates controversies. And in this way contributes to a more reflective society, capable of solving the problems it faces.
Written by
Pedro Graça, Director of the Faculty of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of Porto