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Food for thought

I came across Dr Cielito Habito's opinion piece entitled "Dumb and Dumber?" in the Philippine Daily Inquirer while browsing LinkedIn posts. This article highlighted the Philippines' poor performance in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test measuring selected students' math, reading, and science performance.

Because I now work in the public health space, the last portion of this article resonated with me: poor performance attributed to weak cognitive and learning capacity is brought about by malnutrition. The author then mentioned that children's academic performance is closely linked with agriculture (e.g., farm productivity).

Dr Habito's article resonates with Solano County's Public Health Leadership meeting agenda before Christmas. During that meeting, I learned (a bit more) about how public health is not just about diseases (being a microbiologist, my focus is disease diagnosis). It also covers maternal and child wellness, older adult wellness, and nutrition, among other topics.


Philippine Daily Inquirer, Dec 12, 2023

Moreover, a conference I had attended before I migrated to the USA came to mind. One of the talks was about the importance of providing adequate nutrition to malnourished pregnant women and to children under 1000 days old to prevent stunting.

Given the accessibility challenges to healthy food, maybe it's high time to provide these for free (or for a subsidised cost) in Philippine public schools. Perhaps, by ensuring that children are well-fed during school days, their ability to concentrate will improve, and their PISA scores will improve as well.

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