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[av_heading heading=’EDITORIAL | Wasteful consumption’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”][/av_heading]
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Wednesday, July 5, 2017
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FOR HEALTH reasons, cutting down on rice is actually not a bad idea. According to a study, eating a plateful of white rice daily raises the risk of developing diabetes by 11 percent. But ours is a rice-consuming country, thus making people cut down on their rice appetite is certainly hard. And this is the reason why unli-rice promos of restaurants are instant hits.
But here’s the thing. According to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), an average of five cups of steamed rice is cooked daily for every Filipino but nine grams (around three tablespoons) of this are wasted. These morsels add up to more than 300,000 tons a year!
The Philippines, one of the world’s biggest importers of rice, could go a long way to achieving its elusive goal of rice self-sufficiency simply by wasting less. Why order that much rice for the table when a significant amount is thrown away, taking with it all the nutrients and energy that rice can give?
Middle-class families tend to waste more than low-income families, according to IRRI. Apparently, the more people have, the more they waste? Alarmed of this, state-run Philippine Rice Research Institute and Department of Agriculture have a nationwide campaign to change Filipinos’ wasteful rice consumption patterns.
No wonder administrations after administrations failed to achieve rice self-sufficiency. While there are other contributing factors such as poor farming techniques and frequent typhoons devastating vital rice-growing areas, the public must do its share of the burden to ensure this country’s food sufficiency. Each family can do so by changing its wasteful consumption patterns.
It’s scary to think that we are a country of 100 million people wasting rice.
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