Philippines one of lowest vegetable consumers in Southeast Asia, says expert

By GABRIEL S. MABUTAS

January 31, 2011, 2:39pm

MANILA, Philippines – Philippines has remained to be one of the lowest vegetable consumers in Asia although it has been going down since 1978, a returning scientist under the Department of Science and Technology’s (DoST) Balik Scientist program, said.

Citing data from the National Nutrition Council, Dr. Custer Deocaris said the low consumption of vegetable in the country registered even in 2003 when annual capita vegetable consumption was just 40 kilograms.

For this, he said, the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) recommended that the country makes an annual vegetable consumption at least 69 kg per capita.

“The stigma that vegetables are only for the poor and the incompetent should be taken away," the NCC said.

Deocaris said that China has remained the highest vegetable consumer in the world, with a per capita vegetable consumption of 250 kg per year.

While saying that there is a close relationship between the decreasing vegetable consumption and the decreasing vegetable production in the country, he stressed that there is more problem than production.

“The other reasons why Filipino adults have low consumption of vegetables is preference for meat. Since 1978, Filipinos have also increasingly become meat-eaters with an increasing trend of the share of food from animal sources from 20.3 percent in 1978 to 28 percent in 2003, according to an FNRI report,” Deocaris said.

The declining vegetable consumption, Deocaris said, is among the major factors in the increase of incidence of illnesses in the country. In 2002, the World Health Organization (WHO) said low vegetable intake is estimated to cause some 2.7 million deaths each year, and was among the top 10 risk factors contributing to mortality.

“To increase vegetable consumption of Filipinos, we need to target children. Schools and family will need to seize the opportunity in educating them,” said.

He also cited the need for media to do its part in molding food choices of the youth.

“Aggressive marketing by food companies encourages consumption of greater quantities of energy-dense, low-nutrient foods, like junk foods and fast foods,” Deocaris said.

“There is a need for regulatory opportunities at the national and local levels to mandate action and allocate funds for delivering health-promoting strategies to this vulnerable group,” he added.

The balik scientist noted that despite the high levels of malnutrition among our youth, “Filipinos have also grown to be the 3rd "fattest population" in Asia behind its opulent neighbors, Malaysia and Singapore.”

Vegetable patches turn into vital teaching aids for kids

By Ma. Salve Duplito

Philippine Daily Inquirer

AGRIPINA D. BRILLO, 61, has spent more than half of her lifetime educating children in Nueva Ecija’s public schools.

As principal of Kaliwanagan Elementary School in San Jose City, she has never seen school-based vegetable gardens stir up any interest in this sleepy town where farming is the main source of livelihood. That has changed dramatically in the past year.

Behind the school’s two small buildings are rows of red, ripe tomatoes grown by the children themselves, with the help of their teachers and parents. There are also bottle gourds (upo), sweet and hot pepper, pechay, and eggplants. A modern nursery sits serenely on one side, with young plants sprouting from seedling trays.

The students, awed by what their hands have done, line up for gardening tools every day – eager to see their experiment through. They are excited to eat the vegetables they have grown.

Teachers come to school even on weekends to water the garden. Parents bring soil fattened by their livestock’s excretions to help out. Although the area has no perimeter fence, Brillo says, not one produce has been taken from the garden since they started.

In all the time we have been gardening, we have not really been productive. It is really different when the methods are modernized, we can see the difference,” says Brillo in Filipino.

The modern garden is a corporate social responsibility project of East-West Seed Company Inc., a Dutch-Filipino firm that sells hybrid tropical seeds locally. It also has sister companies in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, and China. One of the reasons for the community’s buy-in into Tanim sa Kinabukasan (TSK) is its active partnership with the mayor’s office, the Department of Agriculture, public elementary schools, parent-teacher associations, and the Synergeia Foundation.

“We can teach our children how to love nature and how to nurture the earth until our voices are hoarse, but that method will never equal what we can do by showing them how it should actually be done. Children learn best by experience,” says Dr. Mary Ann P. Sayoc of East-West Seed.

The method is working. Dar Dexter L. de la Cruz, an 11-year-old Grade 5 student, says his family also plants tomatoes in their farm, but he’s more excited to see the fat and healthy plants he and his classmates have grown in the school’s garden.

In the classroom, De la Cruz and his classmates learn crop and land management, preparing the land, planting, fertilization, water management, peso management, harvesting and marketing, organic farming, and nutrition. But the secret to the effective learning strategy is that the kids actually do what they learn inside the classroom. East-West Seed provides kid-friendly flipcharts and handouts that make everything fun and interesting.

When it’s harvesting time, the teachers and students sell the produce in front of the school. There are cooking contests and recipe exhibits to draw in the community. The community gets access to fresh, cheap vegetables – and the money is pooled to buy educational supplies for the children.

Organizers hope that the project will promote food security, good nutrition, and create livelihood opportunities in San Jose.