Malunggay helps in healthy nation building
Malunggay ( Moringa oleifera), an affordable local vegetable, is the automatic galactagogue (a food that boosts breast milk supply) of choice by most mothers in the Philippines. Malunggay carries 49 vitamins and minerals and essential amino acids, the building blocks of life.
Because of its abundant medicinal benefits to people, from infancy to adulthood, malunggay was declared the “National Vegetable” in 2014. It was cited for offering malnutrition relief in dire areas in the country.
MALUNGGAY HELPS BREASTFEEDING MOTHERS In the Philippines, there are about 4,780 babies born daily, or approximately three babies per minute. This means almost 5,000 nursing mothers must have ample supply of breast milk to feed their infants. Unfortunately, not all mothers can produce enough breast milk to nurse their babies.
This inadequate supply of breast milk to about half of the 5,000 mothers who give birth daily, snapped a Eureka! Moment to Zonito Torrevillas Tamase, a former press photographer of Philippine Star and PR manager of McDonald’s Philippines, who pioneered the baking of malunggay pan de sal in the late 2000s. Why not come out with a bottled malunggay tea drink that is a refreshing thirst quencher and can also induce the production of breast milk at the same time?
“After we discovered that M2 tea drink is helping thousands of breastfeeding mother increase breast milk, we decided to regularly donate to PGH neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) to help mothers excrete more milk,” says Zonito. “As of our last visit there, the nurse on duty informed us that M2 has been helping mothers nurse their infants,” she continues. “M2 contains an equivalent of eight capsules of 500 mg of malunggay powder for every serving – that’s why it has positive effect on breastfeeding mothers.”
Long before Zonito and her husband, Jojo Tamase formed Naturearth Corporation that manufactures M2, they were living separate lives. Zonito was in Thailand working at Dow Jones, a stock market index, after leaving her lucrative malunggay pan de sal business to her business associate. Jojo, a photojournalist, after returning from the US, worked at Singapore Broadcasting. Long time friends, they got married after coming back to Manila.
A BUSINESS THAT IS ALSO AN ADVOCACY “Zonito requested me to man her small food booth at a gas station along SLEX,” says 57-year-old Jojo in their huge plant cum residence in Araullo Street, Hagdang Bato in Libis, Mandaluyong City. “Food items were malunggay-spiked shing-a-ling, best-seller pan de sal, biscocho, and her newly concocted M2 malunggay tea drink,” he continues. “During my first time manning the booth, I made R17,000 in one day.”
The couple then lived in a small house in Mandaluyong with two employees. Now, they live in that big three story house near Shaw Boulevard, with a sprawling plant occupying
the entire ground floor. M2 concentrate tea drink is made of malunggay powder, okra as thickener, and ginger to give taste. Instead of chemical artificial sweeteners, they use Stevia, a natural plant-extract sweetener and sugar substitute that is 200-300 times sweeter than sugar, with no significant calories. Naturearth gets its malunggay leaves supply from Laurel, a town near Tagaytay City in Batangas. The leaves are harvested from wild malunggay trees that grow on the foothills of Taal canyon ridge, and trees planted in the