The Evolving Filipino Food Culture

While it was very interesting learning about a lot of the history and policy work that has been done about the nutrient deficiencies in the Philippines, something I didn’t really get a chance to research more was the common diet of the Filipino people.  Their diet should reflect the deficiencies that the poor lack in the rural most parts of the country, so I will be analyzing the types of foods normally eaten in the area and how it came to be.

                I learned that Filipino culture revolves a lot around meal times and eating.  Therefore, even in the poorest parts of the country-like the ones I will be working in-they are able to purchase foods, although they usually aren’t the healthiest options.  Some staples in these household diets are cheap, processed foods from the grocery store, like chips and instant noodle packets.¹ Other popular foods that are purchased in excess are biscuits, sweets, and sugary treats.  Instead of these nutrient deprived foods, traditional Filipino meals consist of rice, greens and vegetables, and some sort of meat option, like fish.  However, meat is a pretty expensive commodity in the grocery stores, so those living in poverty don’t have the opportunity to purchase them.  These processed foods that have become increasingly popular in the past decade have greatly contributed to the diabetes epidemic that is taking over their country.  In the past 15 years, the occurrence of diabetes in the population has risen over ninety two percent!¹   While diabetes doesn’t seem to be extremely scary in the states, because the Philippines is still a developing country, diabetes there is extremely life threatening, especially in the most rural areas.

                In one recent study, it describes how the Filipino diet overall is evolving, from less beef, fruits and vegetables, to much more rice. ² Looking at food on a global scale, rice is easily the most affordable and accessible food to consume, and it is even easier to cook and eat.  Therefore, this food is in a majority of developing countries diets, and usually makes up about half of their daily energy intake. This causes many nutrient problems, as rice provides virtually no necessary nutrients, but because it is so starchy if fills up the people’s stomachs, so they aren’t hungry.  However the irony is that even though they don’t “feel hungry,” their cells are starving for nutrients.  

                During my practice, I will be helping to bring the developing Filipino community come back to their food roots, and explaining to them why certain foods are healthier than others, and how it will affect their lives in the long run.  Specifically, I will be focusing on the grocery store vs. garden debates and their nutrient differences, as well as how not all foods are created equal in regards to importance.

1.       http://voices.yahoo.com/poor-people-unhealthy-food-poor-filipinos-eat-105097.html

2.       http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/109993/filipinos-eating-more-rice-due-to-poverty%E2%80%93survey

Further Thoughts on Pardada Pardadi

According to Brandon, Pardada Pardadi utilization of money and other incentives to convince parents to send their daughters to school may not be as sustainable as addressing structural barriers that prevent families from sending their children to school to begin with. In a way, Pardada Pardadi serves as conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs since these girls are required to attend and graduate from the school to earn these savings. I do see his reasoning that by incentivizing them with money may seem like the organization is putting an effort to change their behavior out of poverty and putting blame on individuals. However, the Pardada Pardadi Educational Society is not promoting female education over male education as mentioned by Nikki, but rather to address the unequal access between men and women.

            Sometimes, we do have to provide incentives to underserved communities or certain groups of people because they are unable to live according to well-served community’s standard since they do not have the resources to begin with.  By providing them incentives to attend school do not necessarily portray that they are to blame, but rather to empower them to make changes accordingly (with their inputs in mind).

            Furthermore, Maxine Molyneux perspective on focusing efforts only on girls may be unsustainable and may create the effect of burdening them instead of empowering them. Even though this perspective can be accurate within a certain context, Pardada Pardadi is educating these girls so that they do not have to rely on male members of their family or husbands. This is not to say that women should be breadwinners of the family, but now they have the choice to make and allocate earnings according to her necessity without relying on others.  

            Even though I will be volunteering with this organization this coming summer, I will keep in mind all of these questions. I am also positive that there are inefficiencies to the Pardada Pardadi Organization that they can work on. However, I believe that this organization is doing their best at changing structural issues by providing education to girls in the community. 

West Oakland: The Importance of Many Stories

Throughout this research, I have encountered many scholars that support the approach of Urban Agriculture (UA) as a means for alleviating poverty, hunger, malnutrition, environmental instability, community disinvestment, and an array of health problems. Although there are quantifiable, well-researched benefits of urban farming, it has acquired a heavy burden of “fixing” multiple social issues. Like systems of micro-finance  the responsibility of solving these issues has been redirected to these non-profit organizations and community groups in the field of Urban Agriculture.

                At the same time, UA has also been highly criticized as an intrusive, colonial “solution” to these issues in urban communities – one that is out of touch with community wants and needs and still carries an authoritarian “white” face. While most of the people receiving urban agriculture “aid” live in lower income districts or colored communities, several researchers attempt to understand the social, political, and racial interactions and responses to such approaches. Robert O. Self, however, attempts to challenge those historical stories and ideas about these affected communities and how they came to lack such resources. In his novel, American Babylon; Race and the Struggles for Postwar Oakland[i] he reminds us that outside organizations, academics and policy makers are not the only ones “fixing” these complicated issues and to not rule out the communities’ own response to alleviating its problems.  

                This became an important concept for me as I delve into this project because I have noticed a swayed perspective and perhaps even sightlessness to this side of the story. A good amount of the research tends to victimize the affected communities through explanations of social or political repression and injustice, sometimes even suggesting that a community has been or currently still powerless, or even that they are ignorant to or unorganized about solving the issues at hand. Often, and perhaps even in this class, when we come to these understandings through the lens of “educated volunteer,” the focus gets placed on the volunteers, visible activists, non-profits or policy makers or those who are working to solve the problems. This could lead to greater issues. For example, as I was reading American Babylon, Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland, Self illuminated a part of the story that I assume often goes unheard. He brought to life a history of the Black Panthers and their role in organizing community activists and gaining influence after World War II. He also took the time to detail the history of Oakland and how it became a land of disinvestment, which, by many authors, is reduced to overgeneralized terms like “White Flight” or “Black Power” without understanding the complex interactions between participants in its own specific context: West Oakland. The oversimplification of these entangled histories has the potential to stifle the important voices, viewpoints, and stories of those most affected.

                As I was working with City Slicker Farms in West Oakland, a resident walked into the office which is adjacent to a carpentry shop in an older, industrialized neighborhood. He was an older African American male, perhaps late 60’s early 70’s and he came to inquire about a City Slicker Farms program; however the conversation changed quickly and somewhat unexpectedly. He began arguing the inequality still prevalent in West Oakland, questioning the cause of and demanding answers to Oakland’s high lead levels and toxins and ongoing gentrification. This encounter further reminded me of Recalling Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk – The Danger of a Single Story, and the importance for looking at the situation from multiple lenses. Through my recent research and personal experience, I have found that it is imperative to search for a more complete story, that can not only highlight the common viewpoints, like that of the volunteers’ role or organizations’ methods, but also history of the people in the area, their activity in solving or coping with the problems, and importantly, their current understanding of the circumstances they face.

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[i] Self, Robert O. American Babylon, Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland.  Princeton University Pr, 2003. Print.

Vietnam and Self-Medication

 From the economic reforms of the late 1980s, Vietnam's health care system has been transformed into a mix of public and private systems with the introduction of user fees, legalized private clinics, and a commercialized pharmaceutical sector. These reform policies have led to many changes to health access of Vietnamese people and has negatively affected the nation's most vulnerable population, the rural community.

While the country has performed well in health indicators when compared to other countries in the same developmental bracket, there is a skewed proportion of malnutrition and other health disparities that affect the rural populations of Vietnam. Though the introduction of user fees to all medical services has helped finance the Vietnamese health care system and health insurance scheme, it has also created barriers for the poor to access medical care in the preventive stages. Thus, a majority of the rural population and a large part of the nation in general forego medical visits and professional medical advice, opting for quick fixes and self-medication practices. 

The practice of self-medication is dangerous not only on the individual but also on the Vietnamese community as a whole. According to news reports, Vietnam currently is ranked second in the world for taking non-prescription drugs. It is reported that 45% of Vietnamese tend to buy drugs over the counter without seeking medical advice from a registered physician for minor illnesses. The process of obtaining a doctor's prescription, combined with the costs of user fees, are often too expensive for Vietnamese, therefore the individual may commonly resort to the advice of friends and unlicensed professionals to obtain antibiotics  Taking too little, too much, or the wrong medication can not only have no effect on the individual, but it could also potentially damage the individual's health  in the long run if used incorrectly. Not only so, drug resistance can occur and reduce the whole community's immunity to disease in the future. 

According to the WHO, Vietnam has already reported a 10-15% prevalence of transmitted HIV drug resistance to antiviral medicines. Drug resistance to other infectious diseases are on the rise in the country. 

This issue of self-medication and drug resistance is brought about in part by the Vietnamese government's lack of regulation and enforcement of policies. Many have called for a stronger national surveillance network to better monitor infectious disease outbreaks and resistance to antibiotics. Training of medical professionals to stress the importance of proper allocation of medication could prove beneficial. Changing the payment scheme as to how medications are obtained could encourage less leniency to over the counter options. 

This summer, I hope to engage in children's health rights and this issue of over-prescription/self-medication through creating and providing informational materials to parents and community members to encourage proper medication practices. My PE focuses on increasing patient knowledge about this issues and how others can take preventative measures to reduce the spread/contraction of infectious diseases. 

Sources:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12113442

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16012004

http://vietnamnews.vn/social-issues/owners-of-the-future/158488/antibiotics-being-over-prescribed-to-children-say-concerned-parents.html

http://vietnamnews.vn/social-issues/health/210142/who-calls-for-action-against-drug-resistance.html

More on HIV/AIDS in Oakland: Newspapers

As I was searching through the ProQuest Social Sciences database, I came across various newspaper articles that couldn’t serve as my peer-reviewed articles or really be tied into my literature review but were intriguing nonetheless. This news article is written by Jesse Brooks from the Oakland Post and is entitled, “Oakland Intensifies Efforts to Combat HIV/AIDS.” I decided to look into newspaper articles because they provided insight into how Oakland residents viewed this epidemic and how the disease perceived by a certain audience and then presented to the public.

To briefly summarize the article, a state of emergency for AIDS in the African-American community in Oakland was declared in 1998. There are a lot of statistics from 2007 such as African-Americans making up 12.4% of country’s pop but 52.4% of country’s reported HIV/AIDS cases whereas the same ratio is less dramatic for other doemographics: Whites: 37.7 – 23.1 percent and Hispanics: 22.2 – 16.2 percent. The mayor of that time, Ron Dellums, had a goal that every Oakland resident should know their HIV status and prevention information and condoms should be provided to stop the spread of this deadly virus. He said that a campaign should be started to revive the condom budget and the staff of large local businesses will be trained to discuss risks, prevention arid condom usage with customers.

While researching, I was having a difficult time finding articles that were focused on Oakland, which is why I liked this one and how it focuses specifically on Oakland’s efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. It provides specific statistics on the demographic of people affected by HIV/AIDS, focusing primarily on African Americans and comparing the percentages of this racial group to Hispanics and Whites. Brooks also connects the data to other counties around the bay and goes into detail about a specific and concrete model that is being implemented in Oakland to reinvigorate the fight against HIV/AIDS. The fact that big businesses are behind the fight against this pandemic only further shows Oakland residents how important this issue is that there is a lot of support and funding behind it as well.

All of the information in this review is of utmost importance for me and directly affects my role at AIDS Project East Bay. Oakland’s goal is for every resident to know their HIV status and I will be talking with residents who arrive at this non-profit to get tested and make healthcare plans for the future. Hopefully the people I encounter will have already heard of and have learned about the disease. Regardless, I will be working with the volunteer coordinator at APEB to conduct various training sessions to educate as many people as possible about the risks associated with HIV/AIDS and even prevention methods like condom use. APEB targets low-income families and individuals so it is important for me to understand that their clientele are already fighting poverty and alongside that APEB is there to help them through this sickness as well.

After reading this news article, I began thinking about whether the Oakland residents seeking help at clinics run by non-profits like APEB know of the city’s optimistic intentions and mindset to combat HIV/AIDS. How educated are these low-income individuals? I know that APEB helps their clients benefit from the services offered by the state, but I want to know more about how many of APEB’s clients know about the benefits and services before coming to the organization because that would help me determine what I can help direct APEB’s efforts in the right direction.

I hope that I will learn a lot of details about the inner workings of APEB, but I intend to continue reading various African-American newspapers, especially the Oakland Post to be more informed of the HIV/AIDS health situation so I can better understand APEB’s clients and their views/mindsets. 

More thoughts on urban farming

For this blog, I’m going to discuss some points from Saed’s article “Urban Farming: The Right to What Sort of City?” and Julie Guthman’s article “Bringing good food to others: investigating the subjects of alternative food practice” as they relate to my practice experience.

There are a number of potential benefits that communities can derive from urban farming.  Aside from providing more sustainable local food to those who might not otherwise have access to such things, urban farming can also contribute to remediation and the greening of cities.  Here, Saed points out that the environmental clean-up that can result from urban farming is a kind that polluters in both the private and public sectors prefer to evade, and asks “would it not be an irony if urban farming ultimately served to socialize the costs of urban environmental degradation?”

This question is not one that I had previously thought of.  My practice experience organization, Self-Sustaining Communities, operates in Richmond, CA and aims to meet the needs of distressed communities and create a more sustainable city through urban farming projects.  The organization is run on donations and all of the labor comes from volunteers.  The urban farming projects that this organization and others in Richmond are involved in, while successful, seem to be in line with what Saed describes most projects in the movement to be doing, that is “temporarily and selectively cleaning up the mess generated by the capitalist mode of production.”  By operating in this way, I would agree with Saed that it seems urban farming, including that done by my practice experience organization, may be serving to socialize the costs of urban environmental degradation.

To my knowledge, the projects in Richmond do not necessarily address the problem of the pollution and degradation itself by going after the sources.  The structural inequalities that result in the conditions these projects are concerned about are relatively left alone.  Rather, they act more like a band-aid to the problems of contamination and hunger.  Whose responsibility is it to be the band-aid?  Would it be better or more appropriate if we make the polluters pay while advocating for alternatives to the ecologically destructive processes?  Do urban farms still play a role in that kind of movement?  These are questions that I will make sure to keep in mind as I’m doing my practice experience.  However, I also think that the costs of pollution and degradation in industrialized urban cities like Richmond is already socialized in the form of health risks to local communities, and that doing something like urban farming is much better than doing nothing at all in environments like these.

In Julie Guthman’s article, she writes about undergraduate students at UC Santa Cruz in the Communities Studies major, which are required to work on projects as part of the major and are not unlike students at UC Berkeley in the GPP minor.  Her students that work with organizations in the alternative food movement have often come back feeling a sense of disappointment due to their work not resonating with the communities they are working in.  Guthman points out that this may be due to the whitened cultural practices she has identified in the movements and the fact that they can tend to take on an almost missionary-like quality.

I was very interested in these points because it is so similar to what I’m doing.  The article made me reflect on my practice experience organization and think about whether or not it has missionary qualities to it.  From what I know, not having started working with the organization yet, it would seem that the organization does not go into communities trying to change the people like missionaries.  Instead, the organization helps people that come to it by offering knowledge, labor, and material resources to meet the needs of communities and individuals that seek them out.  This is certainly a positive thing, but I’ll be keeping all of this in mind as I’m doing my practice experience to see how things really are.

Guthman, Julie. 2008. “Bringing good food to others: investigating the subjects of alternative food practice.” Cultural Geographies 15: 431-447.

Saed. 2012. “Urban Farming: The Right to What Sort of City?” Capitalism Nature Socialism 23, no. 4: 1-9.

Self-Sustaining Communities: http://www.self-sustainingcommunities.org/

In Response to Chloe’s “Thoughts on “Food Justice- Beet Boxes Make Beautiful Music”

Many interventions such as “Phat Beets” serve to connect local farmers and low-income populations to increase healthier and more equitable food systems often do not incorporate the government. It is unfortunate that as the community participates more, the less demand of the government in making contributions to the society. Therefore, it is necessary for your BareAbundance program to empower the community to make changes in policy system and speak out their opinions rather than solely providing the needs of the community without incorporating the government for sustainable intervention.

Perhaps, you should look into Mandela’s model. The Mandela Marketplace is a non-profit organization that works in partnership with local residents, family farmers, and community-based businesses to improve health, create wealth, and build assets through cooperative food enterprises in low income communities. To address root causes of poverty racism and lack of access to resources to catalyze political voice¾ the Mandela Marketplace serves as a community resource to support community driven solutions to food insecurity in the inner city and support minority and under-resourced farmers. Strategies include impacting the social economy by empowering residents to make change, and the physical economy by improving the community environment through support for local business and civic engagement.

Here’s a link to Mandela’s Model: http://www.mandelamarketplace.org/

Key Issue in Mexico's Water Sector: the Public/Private debate

This summer, I will be spending six weeks in Chiapas, Mexico working with Fundacion Cantaro Azul to develop an effective franchise system for its water sanitation kiosks. This system will enable local entrepreneurs to establish and run the kiosks, creating local partnerships that allow Cantaro Azul to reach a greater number of communities and to ensure that each kiosk is more sustainable and adapted to the specific contexts of its community.

One of the key debates in this sector is the role of the public and private sectors. In the 1980s, the Mexican government underwent neoliberal reforms that privatized a number of industries. The water sector was spun-off into state- and municipal-level organizations, with limited private industry involvement. This decentralization process muddled the accountability and responsibilities of each organization and resulted in a water system that is under invested and unable to effectively deliver clean water to the majority of households, as exemplified by the 2012 NYTimes article, "Mexicans Struggle to Kick Bottled Water Habit".

The recent passing of Margaret Thatcher has brought newfound attention to the issues of neoliberalism and privatization. The main arguments in favor of private industry are efficiency and cost--because businesses are motivated by profits, they will develop programs that deliver the same services as public industries, but with lower costs and less bureaucracy. Additionally, this removes a large burden of costs and time from government concern, freeing up resources for other sectors. While this argument is persuasive, there is a dark side to the profit-motive: businesses which operate solely based on profits, those areas which are unprofitable will not receive services.

This is the exact case in the rural communities of Mexico. Because these communities lack the critical mass to be appealing to private investment, their water infrastructure is sorely lacking, lagging behind those of urban areas by a significant margin.

Cantaro Azul, along with many other NGOs, occupies this space between the private and public sectors. It aims to serve the rural communities that have fallen through these cracks and do not receive adequate services from either private or public water operators. It is important to acknowledge the role NGOs play here as "private" providers of water outside of the state. In class, we studied the receding role of the state in response to NGO operations the "Paradox of Participation" reading. In Mexico, this is certainly the case, as the efforts of NGOs to provide water to communities not served by business interests has enabled the state to play an ever smaller role in water provision. This is dangerous because it  means that there is no wide-range, sustainable effort towards water provision at the national scale.

As a critical resource necessary for both life itself and further development, access to clean water is an important right that is ignored by the interests of private industry. In the public/private debate, it is important that these shortcomings be acknowledged and that the government continue to play a role in monitoring private performance in the sector to ensure that exploitation does not take place and in providing incentives and resources so that access is not limited to those areas which are deemed profitable, but instead, made universal.

An Individual's Role in Living a Healthy Lifestyle

My literature review examines the broader question of who is responsible for health to better tackle the issues faced at the intersection of food justice and maternal health. Because individuals are independent to make their own lifestyle choices, they are often first held responsible for the actions they make. However, others have realized that individuals cannot fully be blamed for some lifestyle choices that are made. Betancourt and Quinland found that the negative effect of social factors on people's health is especially pronounced among minority. Some people have harder times following through with given treatment plans because those plans are not always feasible options. Though they are advised to eat healthier, they may not have such foods available or affordable within their community. People's condition of housing, socioeconomic status, education level, and healthfulness of physical environment are not lifestyle choices that individuals always get to make (Betancourt and Quinland, 2007). My literature review then explores the role that the government, private sector, and civil society organizations play in health promotion and the different debates surrounding them.

Betancourt, Joseph R. and Joan Quinlan. (2007). “Personal Responsibility Versus    Responsible Options: Health Care, Community Health Promotion, and the Battle Against Chronic Disease.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 4(3), 1-3.

Hunger and Obesity Go Hand in Hand?

Antonina Entler

4-10-13

When most people think about hunger in the world the last place they imagine it existing is in the United States. Yet it is true that the fattest country in the world has 50 million food insecure residents. The other day I came across an article in the NY Times called “The South Bronx, Plagued by Obesity, Tops a Hunger Survey” which addresses this issue. The article details how the South Bronx, one of the country’s “capitals of obesity,” boasts some of the highest levels of food insecurity in the nation (37% compared to the national average of 18.5%). It goes on to explain how a lack of healthy food options, in a city dominated by small corner stores and fast food chains, contributes to its high levels of obesity. It also shows how those who are the most obese are often the poorest because they are often forced to buy the cheapest food available (which is usually the least nutritious) and to eat on-the-go due to working multiple jobs and long hours. While the authors of this article make a very valid point about the necessity for local and state government to encourage and subsidize groceries stores and restaurants with healthy options, I would like to take the argument a step further to the national level.

While researching for literature review, I came across an article called “The Fat of the Land: Do Agricultural Subsidies Foster Poor Health?,” which described how agricultural subsides, which are intended to stabilize crop prices, encourage employment, and provide an affordable supply of food have repercussions on the health of the nation, especially on low-income citizens. The reality is that the most subsidized crops—soybeans, wheat, and corn—oblige farmers to overlook healthier crops like fruits and vegetables, making high-fat, high-sugar foods cheaper and fruits and vegetables more expensive in contrast. Often, low-income families have little choice but to choose the unhealthy, subsidized products and to eat at fast-food chains, which also serve many of these subsidized products. It seems that this national policy is only exacerbating the issue of obesity connected with poverty. Since many low-income citizens are on Medi-caid, it seems almost counterintuitive that we are subsidizing unhealthy products that will cost us more money in public health assistance in the long run. Shouldn’t the government be subsidizing fruits and vegetables? Regardless of what we should be doing the truth is that agricultural industry, dominated mostly by a few large industrial growers, has such effective financial and lobbying campaigns in Washington that to even try to change agricultural subsidies seems near impossible.

            

Fields, S. (2004). The fat of the land: Do agricultural subsidies foster poor health?

Environmental Health Perspectives, 112(14), A820-A823.

Dolnick, S. (2010). The South Bronx, plagued by obesity, tops a hunger survey. NY

Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/nyregion/14hunger.html?_r=2&