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Monday, July 18, 2005
Lusabia: Nutrition
By Sister Clarissa Lusabia
Omega and Alpha
EVERY July, almost everyone has his mind focused on nutrition, nutria-fit walk, nutrition month, et cetera, and so many projects to augment and enhance the nutrition and health of the Filipino.
During the other months, do we ever care about it? As if the Filipino does not eat during the other months! As if nutrition is the only concern in the month of July. In the other months, perhaps we can try checking how much is too much. We can try checking how much salt or sodium we consume as we devour sachets or sacks of junk foods, or dried fish, salfish, or when we open a can of sardines or other preserved foods.
Do we compare what we consume with the Info on Minimum Daily Requirements? Perhaps we should check on the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) Info Chart on how much is too much or too little. Or do we just gobble up or drink to our heart's content and delight and not even bother with what is bulimia or anorexia nervosa? How can nutrition really be 'nutrition' in a country that is so self-willed and determined to eat what they like or want and not what they need?
Our TV programs survive on commercials. The best soap as you visualize must be the soap that has the best 'lie'. Whether lie is a chemical or lie is the element of dishonesty in the product presentation. You and I survive on junk foods as we watch these lie-filled commercials that tickle our whims and fancies and arouse our appetites. Bon apetit, eh? Come to think of it while we eat steaks, pizzas, hamburgers, fried chicken, and fillet mignon or cordon bleu, others have only malunggay and still others do not even have malunggay in a swimming pool of bland soup with only a tiny fish lost in its solo flight!
Nowadays, thrift is the key word. Husbands try being 'houseband' playing 'housewife' now. I dare you to stretch your peso to its breaking point or to its final point of elasticity.
Nutrition is not nutrition unless we know how to plant the fruits and vegetables that we eat. Damn the stores that sell them 'high'. Make suki (patronage) with stores that have affordable prices but quality farm products. Why is it that the Philippines can afford tuba or liquor stands but can not afford vegetable and fruit sheds which are needed priorities? We are very poor in discerning our priorities compared with other nations.
In Australia, the people there are the 'best in the world' when it comes to fruits and veggies. They are smarter than Filipinos when it comes to things pertaining to health or health needs.
When the lungs of my Pinay friend's husband collapsed, I almost 'flipped'. Not because of the collapsed lungs, but because she had to pay the hospital only AU$4 beginning with ambulance, entrance 'til exit after stay, and surgery at Hospital Alexandra in Class A1 accommodations. Wow! That was a super duper, even a whopper kind of a hotel! Had it happened in the Philippines I can assure you that 'they would just lie there' and 'they die there'.
Don't blame Gloria either! Whichever, whoever, whatever...nothing happens 'til you allow it.
(July 17, 2005 issue)
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