Malnutrition among Pinoy kids down, but obesity increasing

Incidence of malnutrition among Filipino children has gone down over the past 15 years, the government reported yesterday.

However, about 300,000 kids nationwide remained obese or overweight, said Corazon Cerdeña, supervising science research specialist and officer-in-charge of the nutritional assessment and monitoring division of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI).

Cerdeña said the number of under height children, aged up to five years old, went down from 39.9 percent in 1990 to 26.3 percent in 2005. The number of underweight children dropped from 34.5 percent to 24.6.

"There is a decline of malnourishment among Filipino children, however, children who are overweight are increasing," Cerdeña said during a press conference at the Sulo Hotel in Quezon City.

In its 2005 report on the nutritional status of children, Cerdeña said 3.7 million children, aged zero to five, were found to be underweight. Some 3.9 million were under height, 717,500 were considered thin, and 300,000 were overweight.

She said there was a high percentage of malnourished children in MIMAROPA or Region IV-B comprised of Occidental Mindoro, Oriental Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon and Palawan, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and western Mindanao.

The National Capital Region has the lowest number of malnourished children with only 16.2 percent.

"There is a higher prevalence of malnutrition among children aged zero to five years old," Cerdeña said.

Reports said that children aged zero to 14, comprised 35 percent of the estimated 89,468,677 Filipino population in July 2006.

FNRI director Mario Capanzana said that aside from poverty, one of the common causes of malnutrition in the country is the lack of knowledge on the nutritional values of food.

And in line with the government’s effort to fight malnutrition, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) launched yesterday the country’s first on-line knowledge center on food and nutrition.

The program dubbed "e-nutrition" seeks to improve the nutritional status of Filipinos through the "provision of electronically accessible information on food consumption, nutrition and health status, and other health and nutrition indicators," said Wilma Molano, another supervising science research specialist at the FNRI.

Molano said the e-nutrition program is a joint project of the FNRI and the Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI), both attached agencies of DOST.