Food politics
Food politics
Updated 02:13am (Mla time) Oct 13, 2004
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the October 13, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THE ONGOING controversies around hunger in the Philippines and the government's proposed food coupons should remind us how political food can be.
There's a sense of déja vu to all this, evoking ominous memories of hunger during the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship and how the regime reacted. I say ominous because hunger is something you usually associate with dictatorships and failed states.
We tend to associate hunger with pictures of starving infants with bloated bellies. You do get such children in hospital wards but by and large, hunger in the Philippines isn't quite as blatantly visible. Which actually makes it more dangerous because we don't see the thousands of children who are actually slowly being wasted away by hunger, or by adults whose poor diets are eventually going to make them pay a terrible toll with all kinds of chronic illnesses.
Invisible hunger
About two weeks ago, I wrote about a GMA Network "Imbestigador" documentary that featured faces of Philippine poverty, with one segment focusing specifically on hunger. There were the usual scenes of households whose meals consisted of instant noodles. Others supplemented the instant noodles with a small pack of junk food. There was footage of market vendors giving away leftovers at the end of the day. Again, our comfortable upper classes rarely see this aspect of hunger in the Philippines.
The "Imbestigador" documentary missed out on other faces of hidden hunger, such as the ways poor Filipino mothers have to scrimp on the nutrition of their infants, and the malnutrition that results from these practices. For example, I have seen babies being bottle-fed with diluted condensed milk, which gives them a typical "moon-face," an illusion that the baby is well fed when it's actually under-nourished from an all-sugar diet.
It took the cold statistics of a recent Social Weather Stations survey to remind us that about one of every seven Filipino households had nothing to eat at least once in the three months before the survey. In Mindanao, this went up to as high as 23 percent of households, and I can imagine that in more remote areas of the island, the incidence may be even higher.
Nutribuns
The response of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration was swift, with orders to issue food coupons. The response only showed that the President and her advisers do recognize what a volatile situation we have in our hands. People going to bed hungry is the stuff that makes for more “people power” uprisings.
But the food coupons, which could cost taxpayers up to P6 billion, are ill advised. They again betray the administration's penchant for political dole-outs. The food coupons will do little to reduce hunger, and may in fact cause more harm in the long run.This use of food as a political tool isn't new. Imelda Marcos did this as well, through her many nutrition projects. In retrospect, the projects weren't too bad. There were attempts to educate the public about low-cost but nutritious food. For example, powdered “dilis” (a kind of fish) was rightly promoted as being a source of iron and protein. There were contests for schoolchildren, nutrition quizzes, oratorical contests, to get the young to extol the virtues of nutritious foods. (Remember the TV commercial "Ako si ampalaya, bow" [“I am bigger gourd”]?)
Alas, some of the projects didn't quite consider existing cultural concepts about food. The status-conscious Filipino thought, and still thinks, food has to be expensive to be nutritious. “Dilis” was too lowly. Worse, there were government nutritionists who tried to promote alternative foods that could be found growing wild in backyards, for example, “gulasimang bato.” Alas, people complained, that was food you gave to pigs, not to people.
Imelda Marcos' nutrition projects also involved dole-outs, the most well known being nutribuns, which were specially fortified bread. She personally gave out some of these nutribuns in her sorties, thinking this would gain her political mileage. Again, the public response wasn't always what she and her advisers expected. Word spread that these were old, stale bread, and they were quickly re-christened "Nutri-amag" [nutritious mold].
The Marcos dictatorship tried to use food as a political tool, and didn't realize that people would respond by criticizing the food programs. People weren't just cynical about the nutribuns and the messages about “ampalaya” and “dilis.” They were putting down the conjugal dictatorship.
In the last years of the Marcoses, the “mosquito” protest press began to expose the faces of hunger that the dictatorship had tried to suppress. Magazine covers showed infants and children who looked like they were from famine-stricken areas in Africa but, as it turned out, were from our own backyards. The fancy nutrition programs couldn't tackle the root causes of hunger: the plundering of government coffers and mismanagement of governance in general.
Ending the dole-outs
The Arroyo administration needs to learn from the Marcos era. On all counts, dole-outs never work for the poor. They are stopgap measures and yet, like all freebies, create a dangerous demand. The poor will appreciate the food coupons to some extent, but not in any significant way. Now if the government runs out of money to support the food-coupon scheme, you can expect uproar.
Doling out food coupons does not necessarily mean less hunger. Given the dismally low levels of nutrition awareness in the country, food coupons may only mean more instant noodles and junk food. I've seen it time and again when I give food allowances to household helpers and let them choose what they want to buy from the markets. They come home with cheap cuts of pork, chicken, lots of instant noodles, snack foods, soft drinks and, of course, packs of monosodium glutamate and bullion flavor cubes. Rarely will they get vegetables, fruits or fish.
Our P6 billion would be put to better use if it were allocated for community financing schemes. Many years ago when I worked with Dr. Mita Pardo de Tavera (a former social welfare secretary) and her NGO in an urban poor community, we had a micro-financing community revolving fund that gave out loans for mothers to put up small stores and food stalls. To be able to get a loan, the women had to agree not to sell cigarettes, alcohol or junk food. They were also taught to prepare simple but nutritious meals, and as they served these meals, they were able to talk about good nutrition.
I remembered that community project while watching the "Imbestigador" documentary on poverty (they featured a woman food vendor providing meals at P10 each to security guards and other low-income employees). Support for such initiatives may not be as politically dramatic, but they will go a longer way in helping people help themselves in the war against hunger.
Updated 02:13am (Mla time) Oct 13, 2004
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the October 13, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THE ONGOING controversies around hunger in the Philippines and the government's proposed food coupons should remind us how political food can be.
There's a sense of déja vu to all this, evoking ominous memories of hunger during the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship and how the regime reacted. I say ominous because hunger is something you usually associate with dictatorships and failed states.
We tend to associate hunger with pictures of starving infants with bloated bellies. You do get such children in hospital wards but by and large, hunger in the Philippines isn't quite as blatantly visible. Which actually makes it more dangerous because we don't see the thousands of children who are actually slowly being wasted away by hunger, or by adults whose poor diets are eventually going to make them pay a terrible toll with all kinds of chronic illnesses.
Invisible hunger
About two weeks ago, I wrote about a GMA Network "Imbestigador" documentary that featured faces of Philippine poverty, with one segment focusing specifically on hunger. There were the usual scenes of households whose meals consisted of instant noodles. Others supplemented the instant noodles with a small pack of junk food. There was footage of market vendors giving away leftovers at the end of the day. Again, our comfortable upper classes rarely see this aspect of hunger in the Philippines.
The "Imbestigador" documentary missed out on other faces of hidden hunger, such as the ways poor Filipino mothers have to scrimp on the nutrition of their infants, and the malnutrition that results from these practices. For example, I have seen babies being bottle-fed with diluted condensed milk, which gives them a typical "moon-face," an illusion that the baby is well fed when it's actually under-nourished from an all-sugar diet.
It took the cold statistics of a recent Social Weather Stations survey to remind us that about one of every seven Filipino households had nothing to eat at least once in the three months before the survey. In Mindanao, this went up to as high as 23 percent of households, and I can imagine that in more remote areas of the island, the incidence may be even higher.
Nutribuns
The response of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration was swift, with orders to issue food coupons. The response only showed that the President and her advisers do recognize what a volatile situation we have in our hands. People going to bed hungry is the stuff that makes for more “people power” uprisings.
But the food coupons, which could cost taxpayers up to P6 billion, are ill advised. They again betray the administration's penchant for political dole-outs. The food coupons will do little to reduce hunger, and may in fact cause more harm in the long run.This use of food as a political tool isn't new. Imelda Marcos did this as well, through her many nutrition projects. In retrospect, the projects weren't too bad. There were attempts to educate the public about low-cost but nutritious food. For example, powdered “dilis” (a kind of fish) was rightly promoted as being a source of iron and protein. There were contests for schoolchildren, nutrition quizzes, oratorical contests, to get the young to extol the virtues of nutritious foods. (Remember the TV commercial "Ako si ampalaya, bow" [“I am bigger gourd”]?)
Alas, some of the projects didn't quite consider existing cultural concepts about food. The status-conscious Filipino thought, and still thinks, food has to be expensive to be nutritious. “Dilis” was too lowly. Worse, there were government nutritionists who tried to promote alternative foods that could be found growing wild in backyards, for example, “gulasimang bato.” Alas, people complained, that was food you gave to pigs, not to people.
Imelda Marcos' nutrition projects also involved dole-outs, the most well known being nutribuns, which were specially fortified bread. She personally gave out some of these nutribuns in her sorties, thinking this would gain her political mileage. Again, the public response wasn't always what she and her advisers expected. Word spread that these were old, stale bread, and they were quickly re-christened "Nutri-amag" [nutritious mold].
The Marcos dictatorship tried to use food as a political tool, and didn't realize that people would respond by criticizing the food programs. People weren't just cynical about the nutribuns and the messages about “ampalaya” and “dilis.” They were putting down the conjugal dictatorship.
In the last years of the Marcoses, the “mosquito” protest press began to expose the faces of hunger that the dictatorship had tried to suppress. Magazine covers showed infants and children who looked like they were from famine-stricken areas in Africa but, as it turned out, were from our own backyards. The fancy nutrition programs couldn't tackle the root causes of hunger: the plundering of government coffers and mismanagement of governance in general.
Ending the dole-outs
The Arroyo administration needs to learn from the Marcos era. On all counts, dole-outs never work for the poor. They are stopgap measures and yet, like all freebies, create a dangerous demand. The poor will appreciate the food coupons to some extent, but not in any significant way. Now if the government runs out of money to support the food-coupon scheme, you can expect uproar.
Doling out food coupons does not necessarily mean less hunger. Given the dismally low levels of nutrition awareness in the country, food coupons may only mean more instant noodles and junk food. I've seen it time and again when I give food allowances to household helpers and let them choose what they want to buy from the markets. They come home with cheap cuts of pork, chicken, lots of instant noodles, snack foods, soft drinks and, of course, packs of monosodium glutamate and bullion flavor cubes. Rarely will they get vegetables, fruits or fish.
Our P6 billion would be put to better use if it were allocated for community financing schemes. Many years ago when I worked with Dr. Mita Pardo de Tavera (a former social welfare secretary) and her NGO in an urban poor community, we had a micro-financing community revolving fund that gave out loans for mothers to put up small stores and food stalls. To be able to get a loan, the women had to agree not to sell cigarettes, alcohol or junk food. They were also taught to prepare simple but nutritious meals, and as they served these meals, they were able to talk about good nutrition.
I remembered that community project while watching the "Imbestigador" documentary on poverty (they featured a woman food vendor providing meals at P10 each to security guards and other low-income employees). Support for such initiatives may not be as politically dramatic, but they will go a longer way in helping people help themselves in the war against hunger.
posted by Dante at 9:55 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home