Celebrities are working with the Philippines
government in a recently launched nationwide media campaign to lift the
consumption of fresh produce and fight malnutrition among young people.
The
name of the project, ‘Oh My Gulay!’ (OMG!) (‘oh my vegetables’
in the local Tagalog language) plays off the shorthand exclamation commonly
interspersed in text messages sent via mobile phones – ‘OMG’ for ‘oh my god’ –
and resonates widely in a country where more than one billion text messages are
sent daily.
Local
celebrities in dance, music, and television are featured in print and on
television, posing with their favourite vegetables.
“Role
models are efficient for children, and targeting children is both boosting
immediate consumption and initiating a mindset change about vegetables and
fruits,” explained the founder of the campaign, Ed Angara, a parliamentarian
from the capital region of Metro Manila.
“We
want to make vegetables and fruits sexy – too many Filipinos prefer to buy meat
rather than vegetables and fruits to complement their rice-based diet,” said
Robert Holmer, regional director for East and Southeast Asia of the World
Vegetable Center (AVRDC), a Taiwan-headquartered NGO previously known as the
Asian Vegetable Research Development Center, which is supporting the campaign.
According
to the most recent government national nutrition survey in 2008, chronic
malnutrition (a shortage of intake of vitamins and nutrients) among children is
directly related to the country’s low vegetable and fruit consumption.
An
estimated 29 percent of children under five years old and 33 percent of
children younger than 10 years were too short for their age groups, which is
one measurement of chronic malnutrition.
The
average daily consumption per person was 110 g of vegetables, down from 145 g
in 1978, and 54 g of fruits, down from 104 g in 1978.
The
Philippines’ produce consumption of 60 kg per person per year in 2007 was one
of the lowest in Asia, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO
recommends a daily intake of 400 g of vegetables and fruits per person (150 kg
per year) to help prevent vitamin and mineral deficiencies as well as heart
disease, some cancers, diabetes and obesity.
An
estimated 1.7 million (2.8 percent) of deaths every year worldwide are linked
to insufficient vegetable and fruit consumption, according to the health
agency.
The
celebrity advocacy of OMG! follows a 2011
government program to set up produce gardens in all 42,000 schools by
providing tools, seeds, and training.
“There
is no space too little to farm. Space-friendly techniques allow communities and
families to produce a lot, even on a tiny piece of concrete,” said Holmer.
Container
vegetable and fruit production – for example, growing a plant in a plastic
water bottle – is widely used in cities throughout the Philippines and other
countries.
“Vegetables
and fruits can be more expensive than fish in the Philippines, and their prices
fluctuate a lot,” said Sheila Aclo de Lima, a training officer with AVRDC.
“Thanks
to these (space-friendly) methods, underprivileged families can produce for
themselves, and their vegetable and fruit consumption is resilient to weather
and food crises.”
Increasing
produce consumption is key to reducing the malnutrition-related illnesses that
affect some 200 million children worldwide, according to the Paris-based French
Agricultural Research for Development Center (CIRAD).
Source: IRIN.
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