The food drive ended on Sunday night at 11pm as the more than two thousand supermarkets which participated in the initiative closed.
The food items collected will now be distributed to hundreds of social charities across the country.
The Food Bank holds two annual food drives, with the previous campaign in May raising 1,800 tons of food items.
More than 40,000 volunteers had descended on Portugal’s supermarkets this past long weekend to ask shoppers to contribute to a campaign by the country’s main food bank organisation aimed at gathering food for 420,000 people living below the poverty line.
“It’s good to know that there are still wishes that can come true” was the theme of the campaign, which was held in more than 2,000 super- and hypermarkets across the country.
The Banco Alimentar Food Bank also received support from companies and other entities in the form of equipment and services such as transport, advertising, communication, insurance, security and food.
A study recently carried out by academics at Lisbon’s Catholic University found that the percentage of people receiving support from charities and other welfare organisations, who had at “one time or another” skipped meals for a whole day had “significantly increased” from 2014 to 2016, rising from 18 percent to 26 percent.
Of the families surveyed, 67 percent from charities and welfare institutions have net monthly income of less than €500. Almost half of the families included children and young people.
“It is very important for us not to forget that … there are still people who need help to eat, above all at a time like Christmas, where having the family gathering around a table is a wish that is up to us to make happen,” Isabel Jonet, president of the Portuguese federation of food banks, was quoted as saying by the Lusa News Agency late last week.
“The Portuguese have shown enormous generosity and solidarity, with numerous contributions to all the victims,” she said.
Last year’s campaign saw almost 26 million kilos of food collected, an amount that, “although large, was not sufficient to help all those who need it,” the organisation stressed. It said that “a small contribution” such as a litre of milk, a packet of pasta or rice, a bottle of olive oil or a can of beans, tuna or sausages “make all the different to the institution and the almost half a million” people it supports.