IN October, United Nations Children’s Fund warned in a global report that “Filipino children are increasingly suffering from poor diets, inadequate nutrition and food systems that are failing them.” Unicef’s flagship report—“The State of the World’s Children”—examines for the first time in 20 years the issue of children, food and nutrition around the world. Here’s the alarming part of the report: One in 3 Filipino children under five years old are stunted, which means they are too short for their age, while roughly 7 percent of children are too thin for their height.
“The undernutrition facts in
the Philippines are disturbing—one in three 12 to 23-month-old children suffer
from anemia while 1 in 3 children are irreversibly stunted by the age of two.
On the other hand, 1 in 10 adolescents are obese from wrong eating habits,”
said Oyun Dendevnorov, Unicef Philippines representative. She added: “The
triple burden of undernutrition, hidden hunger and overweight poses serious
threats to child health, therefore, Unicef is supporting the Philippine government
in implementing the Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition. Under the
leadership of the government, working together with private sector, civil
society and all stakeholders, we must address the causes of unhealthy
eating in all its forms.”
Given this background, there’s a need to look at the relationship between nutritional status and educational performance among school-age children. Remember the 2018 PISA results, where the country’s 15-year-old students were randomly tested as a group in Reading literacy and came up last among the 79 countries tested? Surely, food and academic performance are closely intertwined: If we properly feed our children, then they will do well in school. It’s hard to focus on any lesson when you are hungry.
Here’s good news for people who can’t get over the PISA results: On Wednesday, the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) declared that Golden Rice, after rigorous biosafety assessments, has been found to be as safe as conventional rice. The verdict, addressed to the Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rice Research Institute (DA-PhilRice) and International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), details the approval of GR2E Golden Rice for direct use as food and feed, or for processing.
This is a welcome development in a country where many children are still suffering from vitamin A deficiency. Despite the success of public-health interventions like oral supplementation and complementary feeding in public schools, vitamin A deficiency among Filipino children aged six months to five years alarmingly increased to 20.4 percent in 2013, from 15.2 percent in 2008. The beta-carotene content of Golden Rice aims to provide 30 percent to 50 percent of the estimated average requirement of vitamin A for young children and pregnant women.
With the BPI approval, the DA-PhilRice and IRRI will now proceed with sensory evaluations and finally answer the question that many Filipinos want to know: “What does Golden Rice taste like?”To complete the Philippine biosafety regulatory process, Golden Rice will require approval for commercial propagation before it can be made available to the public. We hope that this provitamin-A biofortified rice variety will be available in the market soon, and hopefully, it will help improve our PISA results in the near future.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes