FC Barcelona raises awareness for combat against child obesity

FC Barcelona raises awareness for combat against child obesity

FC Barcelona Foundation, UNICEF and sponsor BEKO join forces to combat child obesity around the world. Part of the campaign was the slogan of the campaign, ‘eat like a pro’, to be shown on the sleeves of the Barca players during the match against Real Madrid last Sunday.

Child obesity is since some years a rising threat, especially in Latin America. The aim of sponsor BEKO is to improve the eating habits of 600,000 primary school-age children by support and education at home and in the primary schools. The FC Barcelona Foundation puts emphasis on healthy nutrition at the events of FutbolNet for a longer time already and run an education programme on nutrition for children in Barcelona until last year.

Donations via hashtag

Before the recent ‘El Clasico’ at Nou Camp numerous (former) players of FC Barcelona published short videos on Twitter and nominated other sport stars for the video challenge. “I eat like a pro, do you eat like a pro?” – was mostly the message of players like Gerard Pique, Ivan Rakitic and Carles Puyol while they were eating fruits or vegetables. Furthermore, BEKO promised to donate 1 Euro to UNICEF programmes per every tweet or post on Instagram with the hastag #EatLikeAPro. Besides the funding, BEKO published a recipe book of the team nutritionist of FC Barcelona and prepared some other tips for parents and their children on the campaigns’ website.

Former Barcelona striker Patrick Kluivert supported the initiative from the beginning as he knows how important a healthy nutrition is: “For me to play at the top of my game for more than 15 years, healthy eating and nutrition was so important to me.”