Food fair to highlight nutrition month celebration in Cebu City

CEBU, Philippines —   A food fair will highlight this year’s celebration of Nutrition Month which will kick off on July 4 at the Plaza Sugbo in Cebu City.

 An "aFOODable Fair" will showcase a diverse array of fresh fruits, vegetables, and other nutrient-rich products at the “Kadiwa sa Ani at Kita” of the Department of Agriculture.

All the products will come from the local farmers in the mountain barangays of Cebu City.

 The launching event will put flesh to the 49th Nutrition Month celebration with theme: "HEALTHY DIET gawing affordable FOR ALL!"

The celebration aims to promote awareness on the pressing issue of food accessibility, availability, and affordability in the country and in the region.

Globally, it is estimated that 3.1 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet while 1.5 billion cannot afford diets that are nutrient adequate.

The Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 68.6% of Filipinos, or about 75.2 million, cannot afford a healthy diet in 2020.

From 2019 to 2021, the same organization reported that 5.3 million Filipinos were severely food insecure, while 48 million more experienced moderate or severe food insecurity.

The 2021 Expanded National Nutrition Survey also showed that 33.4 % and 2% of Filipino households are moderately and severely food insecure, respectively. Among these, thirty-five percent (35%) of respondents said they have been unable to eat healthy and nutritious food for the past year.

The same survey revealed that 9 out of 10 across all age groups could not meet the 100 % recommended energy intake.

 Before the opening program, a "Nutrition Parade" will be done where nutrition stakeholders together with select day care children garbed with affordable foods will walk from Plaza Independencia to Plaza Sugbu.

A Nutri Raecipe contest will also highlight the opening program where identified participants are to cook a healthy and affordable dish using the ingredients bought from the food fair.

There will also be a lecture-demonstration designed to not only increase knowledge of participants about home gardening but to entice the audience to put up their own backyard/kitchen gardens even in an urban environment

Furthermore, the launching event will also provide a platform to deliver health and nutrition services that can be feasted by the attendees aside from a showcase of talents and entertainment from select service providers.

The month-long celebration hopes to relay the following key messages to individuals and families and communities to start children on a healthy diet with exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months and continue breastfeeding for up to two years and beyond with appropriate complementary feeding; eat various unprocessed or minimally processed foods, balanced across food groups while restricting highly processed food and drink products, establish food gardens as an additional source of food; and buy food from local farmers.

It also calls upon policy makers, program managers and legislators to increase the availability of nutritious foods by giving subsidies, product reformulation, and improved food value chains; reduce the availability of unhealthy food through taxation, restrictions on marketing, and consumer education; re-channel resources to agriculture to enable access to affordable, nutritious, and safe food; and implement the PAN 2023-2028 by scaling up food and nutrition security interventions.

Personalities from the Regional Nutrition Council and Cebu City government are expected to grace the said launching. — FPL (FREEMAN)