Good food

PINOY KASI
Good food

By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 01:09am (Mla time) 07/14/2006

Published on Page A13 of the July 14, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

IN a recent article published in Time magazine, former US President Bill Clinton reminisces about his childhood in Arkansas and the meals served at his uncle’s home that included “a ham or a roast, corn bread, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, lima beans, fruit pies and bottomless flagons of iced tea.”

Good food and the good life? Not quite. Clinton says those foods contributed to his problem with obesity that led to a close brush with death in 2004, when he had to undergo a quadruple bypass operation.

Clinton has now partnered with the American Heart Association in launching an ambitious project that aims “to stop the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity” in the United States by 2010.

Overweight, underweight

Where do we in the Philippines stand? The Food and Nutrition Research Institute’s 2003 National Nutrition Survey found that among 6- to 10-year-olds, 26 percent were underweight, 36 percent were short and 1 percent were overweight. Among 11- to 19-year-olds, 16 percent were underweight and 4 percent overweight.

To tackle these problems, we hold classes for mothers in health centers that include nutrition education. And in schools, health education includes some talk about nutrition. But I wonder how far nutrition education will go amid the bombardment of advertising and other marketing gimmicks from junk food manufacturers and fast-food chains.

Even worse, the Department of Health and the Department of Education are themselves becoming unwitting partners of these business interests. I was alerted to this problem recently, when I met with a group of municipal health officers, part of a joint project between Ateneo de Manila University’s Leaders for Health Project and the Department of Health’s Doctor to the Barrios program. These are doctors who serve some of the most impoverished and remote towns in the country.

All of them point to child undernutrition as a major problem in their towns and sadly, they also blame both the health department and education department for contributing to the problem. Their main peeve: the use of instant noodles in school feeding programs. These noodles not only have almost zero nutritional value, but also have unacceptably high levels of sodium, which could contribute to kidney problems and high blood pressure. Yet, the Department of Health puts its seal of approval on these products if they are “fortified” with vitamins. It’s a token move: the vitamin content just doesn’t offset the possible harm of these foods. Worse, public schools have been distributing these instant noodles to the children, which reinforces the misconception that is already widespread among Filipino homes: that such noodles are “good food.”

Trojan horses

The physicians told me that the Department of Education actually has an administrative order banning junk food from schools. Yet by distributing instant noodles in the schools, DepEd administrators are violating the same administrative order.

As for the other types of junk food—chips and candies and chicheria, as well as soft drinks—a quick tour of our schools, both public and private, and including my own beloved University of the Philippines, will show that the stuff continues to be sold in school canteens. Another problem would be all those fast-food joints strategically located near the schools.

My nutritionist friends will attest that some of the fast foods can be even more problematic than the usual junk foods sold in sari-sari stores. Even worse, these fast foods are expensive, draining the already meager budgets that parents have for their children’s schooling.

The distribution of instant noodles in school is like having a Trojan horse that brainwashes the children into the worst misconceptions possible about nutrition.

Walking time bombs

Let’s go back and look at some initiatives in other countries to reverse the tide of school malnutrition. Last September, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that sets limits on the fat and sugar content in foods sold in schools. To be approved for sale in schools, the food product has to have less than 4 grams of fat for every 100 calories. Moreover, no food product containing more than 400 calories can be sold. California also bans the sale of soft drinks in elementary and high schools. The fruit juices that can be sold will also have a limit on the amount of sweeteners.

In England, new regulations on school foods will also go into effect in September 2006. The ban is simple but wide in scope: schools will no longer be selling chocolates, crisps and fizzy drinks (translation for the last two terms: that’s chips and soft drinks). There will also be a crackdown on “substandard burgers and bangers” (I love these English slang words: those are hamburgers and sausages or hot dogs).

The British move came after TV chef-celebrity Jamie Oliver launched a campaign against junk food in schools. Oliver isn’t just working for a ban; he’s urging schools themselves to prepare better meals for the kids, using fresh and nutritious ingredients.

Back to Clinton. He’s fighting not just to ban junk foods but also to require higher standards for food in general. And in schools, he wants more exercise programs.

Can we afford such reforms? I think so. We need to review regulations on the production and marketing of foods, especially for children, including all those joint projects between government agencies and food companies.

The nutrition classes in health centers and schools should be intensified, but we have to teach by good example and modeling, making sure the students see teachers and administrators practice what they preach. We can’t just ban bad foods. We need to offer alternatives, and that means training school canteen concessionaires and the vendors outside the schools to serve low-cost but nutritious (and clean) foods?

Clinton has called American obese children “walking time bombs” because they will later pose a tremendous strain on the American health care system. Our “walking time bombs” are probably more serious as we deal with both obese and underweight children struggling later with health problems even as they become even more nutritionally illiterate parents than the ones we have today. I’m already seeing many of my students at UP having no nutritional sense at all: they can’t cook, and subsist on junk foods. Sometimes, they tell me, “Oh, I do buy food from restaurants.” But check around and you’ll find that those “turo-turo” and restaurants also use instant noodles, instant “arroz caldo” [chicken and rice porridge], instant junk.

Oh, but I fear we might have Filipino children growing up never knowing the joys of good food -- good as in nutritious, as well as good sensuously, sensually, “masarap” [delicious], “malinamnam” [delectable].