By Danilo P. Padua, PhD

Many local restaurants or eateries to be more in cadence with our present situation, have attracted customers because of their unli-rice promo. And who would not fall for that if you are a wage earner or low-salaried worker or even a student with a minimal allowance?
Those who gladly patronize such promo are those who need so much energy in their daily activities. The filthy rich will look the other way, settling for an even more unhealthy dose of more expensive food. Give a poor man a cup or two of rice and he will eat it all but give a rich man a cup of rice and he will nary eat half of it. Therefore, it is safe to say that those who buy into the unli-rice promo will painstakingly pick and eat every grain from their order. In short, there is no wastage.
This is why, when senator Cynthia Villar nonchalantly mentioned a couple of days ago in a senate committee hearing that unli-rice promos in restaurants should be banned, she was speaking with lack of appreciation of the situation. She was just harping on a supposed part of solution to a rice shortage that will be detrimental to workers. If workers can not deliver, the desired outputs certainly will not materialize. Ultimately, the economy suffers. So, what the good senator is saying is actually counterproductive. While she mentioned a reality that eating too much rice is not good for the health, she uttered things that hit the poor people with a knockout punch. It’s a classic example of a wealthy person, deriding the ways of a pauper.
Of course, she was really only echoing what the DOST-FNRI said much earlier that unlimited rice is not healthy, and it does not promote a healthy lifestyle.
Senator Villar added though that she is not contemplating on filing a bill to ban unli-rice. She was just concerned about the unhealthy habit of eating too much rice, and our never ending importation of rice. In the world, we are number six in terms of the average rice consumption per person at 119 kg. Myanmar, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Thailand (surprisingly) eat more rice than us.
CAR is one of the top five rice eating regions in the country with a per person consumption of 132kg. ARMM, SOCCSKARGEN, MIMAROPA, and Western Visayas are the only regions that love to eat rice more than us. In contrast, people in Central Visayas take in only 95kg of rice per person per year yet, the region is churning out outstanding basketball players and other elite athletes, great business people and intellectuals.
The Philippine Rice Research Institute is suggesting that rice should take up only one-fourth of a regular-sized plate.
While the above information point to a necessity of a lessened rice consumption for some, it is not a good basis for a sweeping statement involving more than 50% of our population who do a lot of manual activities, and who can not afford other foods. Banning unli-rice in eateries is not even an answer to our importation of rice. The wasteful eating habit of the rich should be curbed instead as they are depriving the poorer population of available rice and contributing even to more importation.
To the credit of Senator Villar, she said that eating unli rice is a choice of the people. She was right though when she said that we should eat more fruits and vegetables to have a healthier diet. Again, she was partly repeating what the FNRI revealed earlier that it’s the quality and diversity, not the quantity that matters in human nutrition.
Presently, the country has a very low vegetable and fruit consumption compared to other countries in the world.
We should craft an excellent program to produce more fruits and vegetables and campaign for the necessity of consuming more of these important food source. The campaign should include promotion in the multimedia, in school, in workplaces and more importantly, in homes. This is possible only with the collective efforts of concerned government agencies such as DA, DOST, DTI, ans the private sector. **