The main purpose of the country’s quest for food security is to adequately feed our more than 110 million population that’s still growing. Access to nutritious food is a right enshrined in the Constitution, as is the right to a healthy environment which is a condition of sustainable food production.
In his second State of the Nation Address, President Marcos said that the methods toward food security are now more guided by science and the balance of nature. When it comes to food production for human consumption, the science of diets should be part of the conversation in government and in the private sector. Contemporary dietary choices encourage food production processes that are harmful to both human and environmental health.
According to the Department of Health, the top five causes of death in 2022 were noncommunicable diseases from unhealthy lifestyles, including poor diet. Present food regimes are focused on providing food deemed necessary, without considering biodiversity and a stable climate. While the aim is to produce for all, the Department of Science and Technology in 2019 said that the Philippines had 930 million tons of food waste, even while 2.1 million families experienced involuntary hunger in the last three months of the same year.
During the first quarter of 2023, approximately 2.7 million Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger. A World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) study titled “Bending the Curve: The Restorative Power of Planet-based Diets” found that dietary change is a central component of a food system transformation to reduce food loss and waste, along with the adoption of nature-positive production methods. It recommends shifting to sustainable diets, which discourage overconsumption of any food type, respect cultural preferences, and promote healthy food options that are ecologically produced.
Based on scientific projections, shifting to sustainable diets can reduce food-based greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30 percent, wildlife loss by up to 46 percent, agricultural land use by at least 41 percent, and premature deaths by at least 25 percent, while ensuring there is enough nutritious food for everyone.
Sustainable diets, which help address environmental and human health issues, will look differently per country. Some countries need to reduce their consumption of certain kinds of food, while others need to increase them. Some need to radically change current diets, while others need to maintain traditional dietary patterns and resist Westernized diets.
A movement toward a sustainable diet for Filipinos will help the country achieve a genuine status of food security much sooner. After all, its principle resembles that of food sovereignty, which the Food and Agriculture Organization describes as a system that upholds people’s right to food, and ensures that food is produced in a culturally acceptable manner and in harmony with the ecosystem in which it is produced. Good agroecology will tell you that this is how traditional food production systems have been able to regenerate the soil, water, and overall biodiversity for generations.
If sustainable diets largely resonate with the concept of food sovereignty, which is a precondition to food security, then the country will do well to rethink the Filipino diet. Revising the national dietary guidelines for Filipinos is a game-changer—a major policy recommendation we have always put forward.
I hope that the policies that would guide our quest for food security will finally be informed by the principles of sustainable diets. The current administration has the opportunity to make food sovereignty its greatest legacy through a healthy, flourishing environment that enables and supports a bountiful agriculture sector.
Liezl R. Stuart del Rosario,
policy manager,
WWF-Philippines