Children become undernourished due to inadequate food intake brought about by low income and lack of knowledge on food and nutrition.

With these, the City Nutrition Committee through its lead agency, the Nutrition Division of the City Health Office (CHO), spearheaded the implementation and cascading of the G4 Program or the Garden of GO, Grow and Glow.

This program is aimed at expanding the coverage of households and communities establishing their own backyard gardens. The strategy encourages every family in the city to venture into gardening to source their own fruits and vegetables which could yield to the reduction of malnutrition cases among children, pregnant and lactating women in Gingoog. 

Elena, the mother of Jose and Martha identified as underweight from Barangay Malinao,Gingoog City,Misamis Oriental, said that gardening has improved her children’s nourishment. 

”I’ve learned that having our own garden is a great help for my children and in our daily lives, we have fresh vegetables we can readily hand-pick and serve to my children,’’ Elena shared.

Malinao tops among the barangays with the highest number of underweight children.

“I’ve seen great improvement of pre-school children’s weight wherein the parents of underweight children who accepted the challenge of having a garden in their homes where they can offer or serve home cooked foods for their children,” said City Nutrition Nutrition Program Coordinator Yvon Chastity B. Go.

At present, the prevalence of underweight among below five years old children reduced from 4.33% in 2014 to 3.0% in 2016. TheGingoog City Nutrition Committee claims that G4 is one of the strategies that is strongly contributing towards“Zero Malnutrition”. (ycbg, ecc,jrv)