MAP Insights

When we hear the world “malnourished”, the images that come to mind are emaciated children from poor communities waiting for their next Nutribun or porridge. This malnutrition problem has caused a steep rise in stunted growth of our children over the last decades. Children do not grow to their full potential physically and mentally because of bad food or no food. This is brought about by rising poverty incidence or lack of access to nutritious food.

On the other end of the malnutrition spectrum are those who are obese and unhealthy due to bad nutrition. This may include consumption of convenience food, including but not limited to instant noodles, canned or processed food and fried food from fast food establishments. Convenience stores also offer quick meals for the working class, but largely sugar and fat laden choices.

The Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) has created a Shared Prosperity Committee to encourage our corporate members to help address this malnutrition problem. After all, many of the food companies can do Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts as a collaboration project with other corporate members, to slowly but surely address our malnutrition situation. These children will compose our future workforce so it is in our best interest to help educate them by feeding them well, too. Education or knowledge transfer is not effective if the subject cannot think due to hunger or lack of nutrition. In fact, many accounts relate that children cannot absorb what teachers teach because they are hungry when they go to school. This is why the Department of Education (DepEd)  has feeding programs to incentivize parents to let children attend school, if only for stomachs to be fed and next , for brains to be fed as well. We hope this program continues nationwide.

Next is really looking at nutrition from locally-available fresh food, instead of convenience food or processed food. In Bukidnon,  children get to drink fresh milk as there is a dairy industry in the area. In other places, locally-abundant food should be supplied by communities, cooperatives and farmers’ associations under the Community Participation program of the Government Procurement Board (GPB), as shared with us in a recent UN Women Roundtable on Gender-Responsive Procurement. And under the Magna Carta for SMEs, 10% of government spend must be enjoyed by MSMEs who can supply food to these feeding programs. It just takes awareness of how local government units (LGUs) can help local producers while giving children healthy food. This should be an easy way to solve the malnutrition problem, with the help of MAP members who can help mobilize these activities.

Stunted growth is a real problem, not only because these children will grow up short physically but also mentally challenged to learn and take on new information in this rapidly-progressing world of the Internet and the Metaverse. How will our future workers cope? We must be concerned on how to stop the malnutrition problem if we are to think of our company’s sustainability in the next 20 years, at least.

When I dined in a restaurant in faraway Marilog, Davao, I was pleased to see mostly diminutive young women from the Matigsalog tribe serve and wait at tables in this farm-to-table restaurant. Though lacking in height, they were so adept at working with the digital Point of Sale (POS) system, the espresso machines and the other equipment in this modern food facility. I thought “they can be taught as they are all clean slates undisturbed by gadgets and social media” and true enough, the owner confirmed that he is able to train these indigenous people with absolutely no culinary background.

Thank God for good natural food, their brains developed to adapt to modern needs, despite the probable lack of other nutrition or stimuli earlier in their lives. I could not help but commend the chef owner for painstakingly training newbies and really fresh out-of-school youth to have responsible jobs in his restaurant.

But this malnutrition does not happen only in far-flung areas. We also see malnutrition in urban places because of the access to convenience food. Kids no longer eat fresh fruits and vegetables as these may not be included in their food budgets. Children do not eat balanced meals due to financial challenges of parents, even for those with double incomes.

I remember the film where an immigrant family in the USA can afford two burgers for 99 cents (approx. 50 pesos) but cannot afford fruits and vegetables. So they subsist on fast food which has become the main reason for rising diabetes in young people as well as obesity. That is also now happening in our country. Sit in a mall for an hour and observe how many obese youth you can find among the mallgoers. I always observe what they order in restaurants and am convinced it is fast food that is the main cause of this growing problem.

So, as employers of these future workers, we should be concerned as far back as yesterday to address this problem. We will soon have a working citizenry made up of malnourished children (rural and urban) whose mental abilities will be impaired and whose potential may be hampered simply with lack of good, healthy and nutritious food sources. We can find simple solutions to this growing challenge and threat to the sustainability of our enterprises. We must start now if we are to ensure the availability of a healthy and bright workforce in the future.

MAP’s plan for Shared Prosperity is timely and worth working on, all for our own good, too.

(The author is Co-Vice Chair of the MAP Environment Committee. She is President of NextGen Organization of Women Corporate Directors (NOWCD), Founder of the ECHOstore Sustainable Lifestyle. She is a member of the global Slow Food community promoting good, clean and fair food. Feedback at <map@map.org.ph> and <pujuan29@gmail.com>).