The obesity rate of 3.9 percent of Filipino children aged 0 to five years old in the 2021 Expanded National Nutrition Survey (ENNS) conducted by the Department of Science and Technology – Food and Nutrition Research Institute is worrying for Professor Gerald Bryan Gonzales, an expatriate Filipino academician serving as senior scientist at the Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands.
“The number of children that are obese in the country quadrupled. That is a very alarming rate,” said Gonzales, who is also connected with the Universiteit Gent in Ghent, Belgium.
“And at the same time, we are not really achieving a lot in terms of stunting and undernutrition,” he pointed out. “We were able to reduce the burden of undernutrition by half, but the burden of overnutrition quadrupled in 35 years.”
The 2021 ENNS also found that one in every four or 26.7 percent of children under 5 years old was stunted, and that the prevalence of wasting among children under 5 was 5.5 percent.
Gonzales warned that while the World Health Organization has already warned of a double burden of malnutrition, the triad of malnutrition problems existing in the country betrayed a triple burden.
He pointed out the WHO call for what they call “double duty actions for nutrition” which aim to solve all forms of malnutrition with one intervention, having the potential to reduce the risk or burden of both undernutrition and obesity or diet related noncommunicable diseases.
The triple burden of malnutrition refers to the coexistence of undernutrition (stunting and wasting), micronutrient deficiencies (also termed hidden hunger), and overnutrition (obesity), which can all be found in the Philippines. This indicates that for those affected, we don’t only have to provide food, but nutritious and proper food as well, and it is a challenge that both government and the private sector has to face if the next generations of Filipinos are going to lead more productive lives and help the country achieve its full potential.
To put it simply, one not-so-secret recipe for a better nation is just making sure that Filipinos of all ages, especially the young, are properly fed. And that is something our government should be working harder to ensure.*
