Call me dilawan, but I still believe in celebrating the 1986 Edsa Revolution if only because it shows how Filipinos have the capacity to demand for change and oust a despotic leader. I have other reasons, too, but that is more suitable for another (and more political) column. What I want to focus on is the need for another revolution—a food revolution that can change our eating habits and how we view individual diet, health and the environment.
Of course my proposed food revolution is a riff on Jamie Oliver’s campaign to serve more healthy food in school cafeterias. But while the celebrity British chef focused his campaign on the United States and the United Kingdom, I believe that we need such campaign given that more and more Pinoy kids (and adults) are indulging on fast food and junk food. And this is based not only on my personal observation of my 11-year-old nephew’s eating habits but also on the data presented by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) at last week’s briefing organized by Greenpeace.
The FNRI said Filipinos’ intake of fruits and vegetable is declining, while our consumption of meat and eggs is increasing. Combined per capita consumption of fruits and vegetables of Filipinos is 155 grams, less than half of the 400 grams per day recommendation of the World Health Organization. The FNRI conducts a nutrition survey every year, and data from 1978 to 2013 have shown how we are eating more rice and meat, while cutting down on fish, fruits and vegetables. In 1978 our per capita consumption of cereals was at 367 grams. This rose to 387 grams in 2013. Similarly, per capita consumption of meat increased from 23 grams in 1978 to 58 grams in 2013, while that of eggs rose from 8 grams to 17 grams. In contrast, per capita consumption of vegetables declined from 145 grams to 114 grams and fruits from 104 grams to 41 grams.
But the FNRI data is only part of a bigger report issued by the National Nutrition Council (NNC) in July 2017. According to NNC’s Talking Points, 7 in 10 Filipino households do not meet their dietary energy requirement and that only a small proportion of households met the estimated average requirement for certain nutrients, such as vitamin A, riboflavin, vitamin C and thiamine.
The NNC has, likewise, cited several studies that showed the Filipinos’ increasing preference for softdrinks and fast food. The Global School-based Student Health Survey conducted in the Philippines in 2011 revealed that more than 40 percent of students aged 13 to 15 who participated in the survey usually drank carbonated soft drinks one or more times per day during the past 30 days.
The Nielsen Shopper Trends Report in 2014 showed that compared to 2012, there was a 13-percent decline in the Filipinos’ monthly grocery spending, with 25 percent of consumers eating at fast-food restaurants at least once a week. Nielsen’s 2016 Global Ingredient and Out-of-Home Dining Trends Report also showed that more Pinoys were buying ice cream and salty snacks.
You don’t need a nutritionist to know that such diet—heavy on carbs, salt and sugar and low in fiber content—is not healthy. But what makes it worse is its huge impact on the environment.
In fact, this is why Greenpeace launched the “Diet for Climate” campaign last week—and onboard its iconic Rainbow Warrior ship no less. The briefing, which ended with a vegetarian buffet that includes, among others, brown rice, chop suey and unsweetened cucumber juice, featured speakers from the FNRI and Greenpeace discussing how the food we eat contributes to a high carbon footprint and promotes unsustainable farming and food manufacturing practices.
“Unfortunately, for a country highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, this shift in eating habits contributes to increasing industrial livestock production, which, in turn, leads to increasing GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions. Livestock is one of the major sources of GHG emission in the Philippines’s agriculture sector, second only to rice. In the 1994 GHG inventory, total emission from domestic livestock accounted for 32 percent of the country’s total GHG emission,” Greenpeace said in a statement issued at the briefing.
But what to me the interesting part of the NNC report is the fact that we are passing on this unhealthy (and environmentally destructive) diet to our children. And these children will pass this kind of diet to their future children (and grandchildren) because that’s how they were raised. I know that for a fact because my diabetic parents (and grandparents) passed on their fondness for sweets, de lata and rich Pinoy fiesta food like kare-kare to me (and my siblings). Compounding the problem was the rise of fast-food restaurants in the 1980s and those cloyingly sweet imported chocolates that my father bought overseas. My siblings and I will eventually become more health conscious as have seen how our parents had to rely on medicines just to keep diabetes at bay. I, for one, was once a major kill joy who nagged my parents to eat brown rice and veggies. In fairness, they have listened to me. On the other hand, I have also stopped nagging because I chose to have a peace of mind.
But there’s more to a healthy and eco-friendly diet than willpower and personal choice. NNC’s Talking Points quoted a 2006 study, which said that the changes in the dietary patterns of Filipinos can be attributed to several factors, such as increasing urbanization that favored a diet high in fat and refined carbohydrates; trade liberalization that made more processed food and fast food available and the influence of mass media.
“Aggressive marketing could also be a culprit. Marketing of unhealthy foods near schools is rampant based on a study conducted by UP Manila. The study showed that 85 percent of foods with outdoor advertisement fell into the unhealthy foods classification and most marketed food and beverages were softdrinks, energy drinks, alcoholic beverages and other sugar-sweetened drinks,” NNC said.
So the problem, it seems, is systemic. I, for one, think that one of the ways to reduce the consumption of fast food is to limit the marketing of fast food to children. It’s pointless for parents to ban their kids from going to fast food outlets if these children are bombarded every day by ads from TV, radio and online. Of course we can also ban our kids from watching TV or accessing the Internet but I don’t know what will be the consequence of such strict parental supervision on a child. Since I’m not a parent, I will leave it up to you moms and dads out there if this is in fact an effective parenting style.
I’m also in favor of the taxing of sugar-sweetened drinks, as outlined in the first package of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN), believing that this will reduce the consumption of softdrinks and other drinks sweetened by that unhealthy (and also not eco-friendly) high fructose corn syrup. The sugar tax is something that I want to discuss in my future column. But for now, I’m hoping that the revenues derived from the sugar tax will be used to subsidize healthier food alternatives such as organic food.