ORLANDO CARVAJAL:
Nutrition month reminds us of hard facts such as: among two-year olds and younger, the malnourishment rate is 26. 2 percent or one-fourth of all children and their malnourishment comes from eating more than enough protein but disastrously less energy foods. Such are usually followed by recommended formulae for balanced nutrition or what kind of nutritive foods government health clinics and public elementary schools should give to lactating mothers and their children. The flip-side of malnutrition turns on the premise that it has less to do with the formula and more with the accessibility of a healthy diet.
Nutrition month reminds us of hard facts such as: among 2-year olds and younger, the malnourishment rate is 26. 2% or one fourth of all children and their malnourishment comes from eating more than enough protein but disastrously less energy foods.
Such are usually followed by recommended formulae for balanced nutrition or what kind of nutritive foods government health clinics and public elementary schools should give to lactating mothers, their newborns, toddlers and school kids.
The flip side of malnutrition turns on the premise that it has less to do with the formula and more with the accessibility of a healthy diet. From that side only the upper middle and rich classes can really opt to be malnourished because their money enables them to override healthy formulae and splurge on their favorite unhealthy food. The lower middle and poor classes do not opt but are forced to be malnourished simply because they cannot afford an adequate much less balanced diet.
Coming from that side I am reminded on nutrition month of the most malnourished group in the country, the small farmers who ironically are feeding the nation. In 2015, the country had eleven million farmers. At a conservative figure of four members per farmer-household that comes to 44, 000, 000 (almost half the population give and take) malnourished families.
This is so because of another hard fact that small farming in the Philippines (1.5 has. per farmer on the average) cannot feed a family in any adequate and nutritious way. The official average yearly (yes, yearly) income of farmers is P20, 000. Just exactly how much good nutrition will that afford a farmer-family?
Hence, I propose that nutrition month should be about all concerned government agencies and not just the National Nutrition Council (NNC) getting together to hit at the root of our malnutrition problem. It’s no use educating people on healthy diets when they simply cannot afford such.
Because of climate change, farmers mostly need irrigation, water impounding and flood control systems so they cease to be helpless against the vagaries of the weather. Also, the middle-man has always controlled the price of farm products. It’s time some system is installed to give farmers access to the better price from direct consumers.
Instead of romanticizing our farmers it is time for more walk than talk on how to improve their nutrition by improving their productivity and empowering them with better farm-gate prices for their produce.
(Daily-wage earning workers are also a malnourished group. For them, nutrition is about better pay so they can feed themselves better).
These and more, otherwise the NNC might as well scatter its nutrition formulae to the wind.