San Juan City hosts the launching ceremony of the Nutrition Month celebration on July 1 morning.

A program started the celebration which was attended by the newly-elected officials of the city led by Mayor Guia Gomez and Vice Mayor Francis Zamora.

Also in attendance were the members of the Regional Nutrition Management Group of the National Capital Region (RNMG-NCR), National Nutrition Council-NCR, representatives of Association of City/District Nutrition Program Coordinators of Metro Manila, Regional Federation of Barangay Nutrition Scholars, San Juan Barangay Captains, Day Care pupils and city hall employees.

In her speech, Mayor Gomez assured the San Juaniños of working hard on her next three- year term and prioritizing the nutrition program of the city.

Guest speaker Ms. Mila Federizo, Regional Nutrition Program Coordinator of the National Nutrition Council – National Capital Region (NNC-NCR) on her part expounded on this year’s nutrition month theme “Gutom at malnutrisyon, sama-sama nating wakasan!”
“The government wants that through the celebration of the nutrition month, everyone will be encouraged to unite and work so that we will be able to meet the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger,” Ms. Federizo said.

Federizo also challenged the public to contribute in their own little way to minimize the incidence of hunger like planting vegetables, practicing or promoting breastfeeding, avoiding food wastage, providing livelihood opportunities for poor families, buying locally grown foods to support farmers and to know, practice and spread good nutrition.
The program was followed by the opening of food exhibits, group dancing, diet counselling, bone scanning and weighing and feeding of day care children.

Nutrition Month is celebrated every July as dictated by Presidential Decree 491 which created the National Nutrition Council and duly signed by then President Ferdinand Marcos on June 25, 1974. This year’s theme focuses on hunger and malnutrition to raise awareness on the need for more action by everyone to mitigate hunger and malnutrition and meet the MDG 2015 where the Philippines is one of the signatories.

"We need everyone's cooperation because the hard truth is, we are far from reaching the goal of lowering the incidence of underweight from 27.3 in 1990 to 13.7% in 2015. The 2011 National Nutrition Survey of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) reveals that 20.2% of children below five year old were underweight, 7.3 % were thin and 33.6% were small for their age," Federizo emphasized. (RJB/LFB/PIA-NCR)

Written by Lucia F. Broño, PIA-NCR
Lifted from http://www.pia.gov.ph/news/index.php?article=221372755082