UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Dr. Raymund W. Lo
Mother’s milk is best for newborn babies, that is, if the mother is healthy to start with. Assuming we’ve taken care of the expectant mothers nutrition during at least the second half of her pregnancy, then she will definitely be the best source of her baby’s nutritional requirements, which should be supplemented with multivitamins nevertheless. Thus, we will have taken care of the first six months of the baby’s proper brain development.
Thereafter, breast milk will have to be supplemented with nutrient-dense food and iron supplementation. This will be the challenge, and it will take a whole village, the Pink village, to solve. Among the 15 million (or more) who voted for Leni should be nutritionists, food technologists, and pediatric experts who can propose the proper food formulations for the different stages of the infants’ lives. Based on these formulations, we will have to grow the crops and raise the protein sources, preferably plant-based.
What a perfect setting for Kiko Pangilinan to step in with his farming advocacies! With the proper knowhow and support, our Pink farmers can grow fresh food, which will be bought at the proper prices, bypassing the middlemen who often profit more from the farmers’ backbreaking labours. One more 'laylayan' problem solved in an integrated program.
With the raw ingredients, our food technologists can come up with the food products suited for the young child's proper brain development. Next, there should be some creative minds here to transform these raw materials into nutritious and palatable if not outright delicious foods. These Pink entrepreneurs will be properly compensated but will be giving back to the movement as well.
We’re now reading about the reintroduction of a modern-day version of the Nutribun, which, by the way, was introduced in the 1960s by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to fight malnutrition in the Philippines. I’m sure we can come up with tastier versions to suit the Filipino palate, as I’ve read the Nutribun was “horrid tasting.”
The next challenge is to deliver these food products to the target population, and this is where the volunteerism of the Pink campaign comes in. We will still need the buy-in of the mothers to get the foods to where these will do the most good.
Assuming we’ve done well in providing the proper nutrition to the children, we must not let the ravages of childhood infections and parasitism take their toll. Routine deworming and vaccinations must be rigidly followed, or else we will have wasted our efforts in assuring proper nutrition. We still have a long way to go, what with vaccine hesitancy still lingering.
We will have to monitor the progress of these children’s development through the usual metrics of child health: weight, height, head circumference, etc. But the better measure of success will be how they perform in school. We already know how poorly our children have performed on world metrics in reading comprehension and even IQ, let alone in math. Results will not be apparent until many years after initiating the project.
At the end of the day, what can we expect of this child nutrition project? We should be seeing gross improvement by way of increased heights, since stunting is manifested early on by “dwarfing.” When we were in medical training in the USA in the early ’80s, a group of newly hired Filipino nurses entered the elevator we were in and I recall thinking how short they were, with not even a single one clearing five feet. Filipino stature has since improved, but recently we’re seeing more short Filipinos again.
More than stature, we should see improvement in scholastic achievements. Our schoolchildren should be able to read earlier and understand what they are reading. This is essential to critical thinking, for how can a person think properly about a subject he/she can’t comprehend?
With proper nutrition comes improved school performance and with that, improved chances of completing college education and getting better-paying jobs, and hence lifting them out of poverty. We may not be able to help this current generation, which is mired in a cycle of poverty, despair, and ignorance, brought on by poor nutrition and lack of proper education; but we will have to pin our hopes on the next generation by investing in them. This we owe to ourselves and the country.