00:00 Food insecurity and updates on the programs of the Department of Science and Technology.
00:05 Let's find out together with the Director of the DOSC Food and Nutrition Research Institute, Imelda Agdepa.
00:11 Director, good afternoon and welcome to Bagong Pilipinas.
00:15 I am Chi Atienza and I am here with Asik Weng.
00:19 Yes, good morning Asik Weng and Ma'am Chi.
00:26 Yes, good afternoon. The Department of Science and Technology, Food and Nutrition Research Institute is actually very,
00:33 what do you call this, we appreciate very much for us being interviewed in here
00:39 because this is one way to actually disseminate the information that we have gathered already.
00:46 Okay, Director. Before we discuss the details of food insecurity,
00:51 for most people, what does food insecurity mean?
00:55 Because we are used to food security but this time it's food insecurity.
00:59 And what region in the country has the highest food insecurity prevalence?
01:04 Yes, Ma'am Chi. According to the FAO or Food Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,
01:12 food insecurity is the limited access and availability of healthy and safe food for our Filipino population.
01:25 So, this is a level of insecurity or severity from the fear that you won't have enough food,
01:36 that's actually worrying about food, and the reduction of the quantity of food,
01:44 that means to say we are reducing the quantity and the quality of food to be consumed because there is really no food.
01:51 So, another dimension of food insecurity is that they experience not eating for a whole day,
02:00 they just sleep because they don't eat.
02:05 So, their last resort so that they won't feel hungry is to just sleep.
02:13 So, these are the dimensions or experiences of food insecurity
02:18 so that we can indicate that a household or an individual is experiencing food insecurity.
02:26 Ma'am, since the National Nutrition Summit, what is the difference in the situation of food and nutrition from different regions?
02:35 Well, this is based on our expanded National Nutrition Survey.
02:41 It was designed to be a rolling survey from 2018 to 2020, unfortunately, we just finished 2018-2019 because of the pandemic of 2020.
02:57 So, because we didn't finish the 118 provinces and highly urbanized cities in 2018 because there were only 40,
03:08 2019-2010, 40, so there are remaining 37 that are supposed to be covered by 2020.
03:16 Because of the pandemic, we sent our 600 researchers home and we continued the survey in 2021.
03:26 And here, we saw that the southern part of our country is the one that has severe food insecurity or moderate to severe.
03:39 This is Bangsamoro in the Muslim Mindanao region that has 84% prevalence of food insecurity.
03:49 Next is Angkaraga, we have 69.8% or equivalent to around up to about 70%.
03:57 Eastern Visayas is also high, this is 69%.
04:04 Northern Mindanao, 69%.
04:07 Samhuanga Peninsula, this is Region 9.
04:12 And Bicol, Region 5, having about 68%.
04:18 This is the most problematic province that has a high percentage of food insecurity.
04:30 Director, this report is a bit worrying, but from this food and nutrition contrast, what are the benefits of the government up to now?
04:40 Especially for the regions that you mentioned earlier that have high food insecurity prevalence.
04:47 Well first of all, we in the Department of Science and Technology, Food and Nutrition Research Institute,
04:53 we are working on ways to make our nutritious products accessible.
04:59 Everything that is produced in our institute is analyzed by the substances that are in the products.
05:10 So our agricultural products, for example, our squash, sweet potato, carrots, we made this famous nutriban.
05:22 We innovated a product because the price of flour is high.
05:29 We mixed the flour of the agricultural product to make it nutriban.
05:42 This is what the Department of Education, the Department of Social Welfare and Development,
05:49 the National Nutrition Council, and all other international development agencies like the World Food Programme
05:59 use this for their supplementary feeding.
06:05 We also have iron-fortified rice, this is the best.
06:09 Iron-fortified rice is the small grain of rice in the mill, the broken rice that we call it.
06:22 They sell it for animal consumption at a lower price, now it's around P28 per kilogram.
06:29 So we made a technology where we made flour, the broken rice, to extrude it in a machine that already has iron.
06:45 So when it comes out of our machine, it's a whole grain rice with iron.
06:51 So that means to say, that rice is converted for human consumption, therefore it's adding up to the volume of rice supply in the Philippines.
07:04 They don't give it to dogs or animals anymore because it's already whole and has iron.
07:13 We mix that whole grain rice with the ordinary whole grain rice to have iron in our rice and that's what we call iron-fortified rice.
07:28 So this technology makes our mailers happy because aside from having income,
07:40 because we have actually increased the value of their broken rice from P27 to P50, that's very great.
07:51 And therefore, this iron-fortified rice is being used again by our institutional partners like the Department of Education,
08:00 as I have said, the Department of Social Welfare, this is part of their family food pack during disaster.
08:07 This is also what the DSWD is using because we appreciate very much the efforts of our government secretaries of the ISAF Department
08:17 because they are listening to what we are saying because these are grounded on science and we have proven that in all our studies.
08:26 This is why we are doing this, Ma'am Weng and Ma'am Chi and Asep Weng, to alleviate our food insecurity problem.
08:38 We have many products like for example the iodine drinking water.
08:44 Iodine is actually for the brain and therefore, what we did is we added iodine to our water for our school children.
08:58 We have many products here in our institute that we are working on a way to reach the grassroots.
09:10 The DSWD food stamp program, we played a very good or very important or significant role because Secretary Gatchalian also consulted us
09:28 on how would be the mechanism of giving that kind of incentives to the poorest of the poor.
09:34 We also told them how they would divide the P3,000 that we are giving to people so that they will have the right substance.
09:47 Even if it's just a little, at least we can reduce the hunger so we can close the gap between intake and what the body needs.
10:01 We were also consulted. We are also happy.
10:07 I heard on the radio that the President formed a technical working group to address our el nino that we will have again food insecurity,
10:22 severe food insecurity because of the problem that we are talking about.
10:28 So it's a very good foresight planning that our government is doing because our DOSC Secretary is also there as the co-chair of our technical working group.
10:42 This is actually an evidence that we are already having an interconnectedness of the relevance of its government agency in terms of unifying our efforts to solve a certain problem.
10:56 That is what we are doing now as a queen and a chief.
11:03 So ma'am, do you have any studies on your work on the change in the choice of food of our countrymen after almost three years of pandemic?
11:14 If there are any changes, what are those?
11:16 Aside from the ones you mentioned, that you are doing innovations in products or in our crops.
11:25 Actually, when we say that there are not many changes,
11:31 because when we analyzed the data representing the national estimates of 2018-2019 compared to the data of 2020 that we collected in 2021,
11:47 there is not much difference in our statistics because of the good implementation of the project of providing aid during the pandemic.
12:04 That is why our problems did not change much.
12:08 Again, the stunting, the lack of height, that's what we said about stunting, the lack of height according to their age, there are still many of them.
12:19 This is experienced by our youth in Western Visayas, in Barm, in Buanga, they are all the same.
12:30 Where food insecurity that we mentioned is provincial, they also have the problem of undernutrition.
12:39 Undernutrition encompasses stunting or pandemic, the lack of weight according to their age, the lack of weight according to their height.
12:51 But when we see the other side of the coin, NCR and other highly urbanized cities,
13:00 this is where food insecurity level is low, they also have overweight and obesity problems.
13:11 So again, if we try to really look at the solution, it should be a holistic solution so that we can actually solve both ends of the spectrum.
13:24 So that's what we are saying to our government that if we have a message for this,
13:33 it should be understood by the grade 1 students so that the users or listeners of those messages can really understand it.
13:46 So this is what we are talking about, that it should really be having a very simple and culturally sensitive and understandable messages.
13:58 So that is our problem regarding malnutrition.
14:04 Okay Director, for the youth, you mentioned good news.
14:10 But when it comes to the results of the latest nutrition survey and how the youth eat now,
14:17 is there any truth that there is a significant increase in obesity in the youth in the country after the pandemic?
14:27 Yes, Ma'am Chi.
14:31 Because during the pandemic, we still had food because even if there is a little food insecurity, we still had food.
14:42 So what happened is that our children or even ourselves were not able to go out that's why the overweight and obesity increased.
14:53 So what's important is that even if you don't go out, you should have physical activity.
14:59 You should move around even if you are inside the house, you can move around to alleviate the problem of overweight and obesity.
15:08 Because it's not just the formal exercise that you go to the gym and so on that lowers the weight.
15:16 The problem is if a person is obese or overweight, there is a higher probability of hypertension, high cholesterol, and heart attack.
15:35 So those are the problems that we should really, that's why I'm saying that the approach should be holistic.
15:43 There should be physical activity, there should be food, there should be the right quantity, there should be the right quality.
15:49 That's what we should tell them.
15:52 So Director, how can we change the behavioral approach of our fellow citizens when it comes to the right choice of food
16:00 and what is the government's approach to the access of our fellow citizens to food and nutrition from different population groups?
16:09 Yes, the Department of Education has the National Feeding Law and this is implemented by the Department of Education for our youth who have been assessed as being overweight.
16:27 So they have been consulting us on the proper foods to be consumed by our children.
16:37 We have been given a lot of low-cost recipes so that they can implement this in the cooking of the food for the children.
16:47 Again, the other projects are the end-to-end approach from behavioral change or from the production to behavioral change.
17:01 So from the production side, ma'am or Sec. Nguyen, the Department of Agriculture should look at what are the climate-resilient products
17:20 and if there are a lot of products in one area, there should be a very good distribution system that these products should be distributed to the provinces where there are no such products.
17:34 So that the products will not be spoiled in one place while the other places need it.
17:44 Again, the problem there is the post-harvest. Post-harvest, from the production side, if they will transport it to a faraway place,
17:55 we should have a good post-harvest storage so that along the way, even if it is far away, we reduce the food wastage.
18:09 For our consumers or our population to have healthy food choices, there should be messages.
18:21 We at the Department of Science and Technology, if you see our website, there are a lot of simple messages about cooking affordable meals but nutritious.
18:36 There is a way to select fruits, how to eat in one day.
18:45 Everything is there on our website so that when they look at our website, they will see it.
18:54 Now, it should really be all of us are using cellphones.
19:01 We keep on advertising on Facebook about our statement about malnutrition.
19:08 It's very simple so that our people can understand.
19:13 That's right.
19:16 That's right, Director Agdeba. It's very timely, especially since there are many people who are saying goodnight.
19:23 It should be a reminder to all of us that our choices should be healthy so that this issue of food insecurity and malnutrition in our country can be averted.
19:32 Thank you very much for your time, DOSC Food and Nutrition Research Institute Director, Imelda Agdeba.
19:38 at Depa.
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