Veggie flour for better nutrition

An enterprising nurse who worked for three years in the United States came back to the Philippines ten years ago so she could put up a social enterprise project that could benefit the less fortunate.

Sandy Montano, the nurse OFW, put up in Martires City in Cavite a social enterprise school called CHEERS that stands for “Community, Health, Education, and Emergency Rescue Services.” As a special venture, she started in 2015 the production of vegetable flour from four locally available raw materials known for their nutritional value.

Sandy was aware that many school kids are consuming a lot of junk snack foods which are not exactly good for their health. Not only school kids but even adults are guilty of eating junk foods like instant noodles which are readily available practically everywhere.

Sandy thought that Filipino children as well as adults deserve nutritionally better meals and that’s what motivated her to get into the production of her Tropica flour made of the four raw materials – camote, cassava, mungo and malunggay which she buys from Indigenous People from Botolan, Zambales. The Aetas grow the crops the natural farming way, not using any chemical pesticides. Sandy, by the way, is a member of the Natural Farmers Institute of the Philippines.

The four raw materials are dried and combined in equal parts by weight and then milled into fine flour which is used to enrich various food preparations. Enriched food products could include chocolate energy bar (Sandy’s favorite), pan de sal, pastries, polvoron, burger patties, vegetable sticks and more.

Usually, it takes 16 kilos of raw materials costing from R160 to R180 to produce one kilo of vegetable flour. If sold, the flour could sell from R250 to R300 per kilo. But Sandy does not sell the 100 kilos of veggie flour that she produces every week. Instead, she uses the same to process value-added preparations

VALUE-ADDING – The vegetable flour produced by Sandy Montano is a means to add value to processed food products. For instance, the two pouches at left are “polvoron” which are of much better quality than others that are locally available in the market. The next pouch is that of the Tropica flour. At extreme right is the chocolate energy bar which is the favorite of Sandy Montano.