Funny how a country like Indonesia can have a food crisis. But no, I’m not talking about hunger or the ridiculous rice import, it’s the government’s call.
What I think more important is not about having enough food available, but having enough healthy food available. It’s a problem I think we, as private sectors and citizens, can and need to solve without the interference of the hopeless government.
My handicaps in carb and dairy products can be a case study, as I am sure it also represents some, if not many, people’s nutrition problem as well. I also just found out actress Zooey Deschanel is also someone with allergy towards milk and eggs, and in USA eating disorders have been an important issue since the research by the film Supersize Me (2004) about how every 1 in 4 Americans have obesity because of their food culture. Lately there have also been calls about how hard it has been to eat healthily because of the very limited supply of healthy food, and how it has cost more expensive than the unhealthy ones—a finding I read a few months ago and have found some similarities with the condition in Indonesia, particularly with myself.
During my considerably intensive diet the past 14 months, I have found it hard to find many enough menu to combine in a week. I often had to eat the same menu only after 3-4 days, and sometimes I broke my diet program not because my body wasn’t able to obey it, but because I got bored having had to return to the same menu too fast.
Some of my friends who also have overweight problem have more concern on the cost. They still couldn’t adapt to the taste of healthy food, having used to eat food rich in carb, meat and anything fried, and having had to pay more for it makes little sense to them.
If only salads and fruits in supermarkets are cheaper than the pastas and meat, I suppose people like my friends here will have more willingness to try (and adapt), knowing it can economically benefits them as well. But so far you can get a quarter of a roasted chicken for less than IDR 20k (USD 2.25) while any salads would cost you IDR 22-26k (USD 2.50-3.00). A quality local orange costs IDR 30k (USD 3.50) per kilogram in supermarkets, an amount equal to six oranges that will last only a day for a family of 4 or 5… 6 days for a single living person like me. They call it mango season, but supermarkets sell freshly-diced mangoes for IDR 30k (USD 3.50) per bowl, quite a slim amount to be served as dessert for a family of 4. The most absurd are coconuts in restaurants, at a staggering above IDR 15k (USD 1.75) per glass of serving, or around half of the coconut, while on the streets warungs still sell at IDR 5k (75 cents) per glass of serving, or IDR 5-10k for the whole coconut if you want to cut it out at home.
Luckily bananas and papayas remain inexpensive, but they’re the only affordable options for those who don’t want to spend too much on fruits.
The same goes to snack. You’ll have more luck if you live near traditional market like my home in Surabaya, you’ll have access to fresh traditional snacks. But if you depend all your food needs in the supermarket, then you will consume a very large amount of food color and preservatives—two of some factors that can accelerate the chance to have kids with built-in ADHD. Other than food color and preservatives, the amount of sugar on some snacks and drinks is also ridiculously high. A friend of mine got this information about how the first ingredient mentioned in the packaging is the most dominant ingredient in the food, and so many snacks—chocolate bars, biscuits, etc—mention sugar as their first ingredient. So if you eat that kind of bar of chocolate you can now know that you’ve just put spoons of sugar into your mouth, probably double or triple of the sugar portion for a sweet iced tea. And that still hasn’t include the flour (carb, that will be digested into sugar), which the snack is made of.
You’ll also be surprised if you try to find snacks with no dairy ingredients in a snack alley of a supermarket… almost all the biscuits contain milk. Even some biscuits you thought was salty, sometimes it uses milk. I got tripped once and got some acnes grow.
I am still not sure what made food manufacturers produce such food. It can be taste consideration, like what happens in chocolate-based confectionaries, it can also be price consideration. Let’s hope it has nothing to do with milk and sugar manufacturers.
I am also unsure what made the food distributors (the supermarkets) to do such policy of expensive healthy food. They may not have enough cheap resources, or they can simply be selfish, taking advantage of the situation. Let’s hope it’s not the latter.
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There are basically two ways we can try to anticipate the crisis.
The first would be to produce more options on the healthy food, whether increase the farm and supply (quantitative) and improve more menus (qualitative). The more alternatives, the cheaper the price should be, like what has been happening in the unhealthy ones. In the meantime, people like me who doesn’t own farmland or food factory but work in communication business can help to promote healthy food, encourage low-carb and low-dairy diet, and I’ve been doing so, starting with my family and closest friends. Hopefully by reading this you readers will be encouraged to pass it on, or even read more or do more research to perfect the current findings.
The second, the bigger step, would be to plan a food culture revolution. It will need participation from those more expert in food and nutrition, like food scientists, nutritionists, doctors (supported with the facts about the increasing number of patients of diabetes, cholesterol, high blood pressure, stroke and cardiac problems), food journalists and writers. We need a longer term strategy to reduce our dependency on carb, sugar and dairy. Not only it will increase overall health and reduce the number of people suffering from blood-related disease (diabetes-cholesterol-high blood pressure-stroke-heart disease-obesity), it may also contribute in solving the nation’s problem with self-sufficiency on agricultural supply. Distributors will probably find it harder to dictate the rice price, and some other people will need to find another field to do their corruption.
Let’s just say it’s the same spirit like the film Supersize Me, only in a 2011 way, by no longer blaming the institution and wait for them to fix the problem, but by starting to act by ourselves, no matter how small it is. If someone can change two people, then the numbers may multiply. Like population.
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Some articles you may want to read, pardon if some are in Bahasa…
• Peter d’Adamo’s Blood Type Diet by Wikipedia
• The price of fruits and vegetables climb faster than inflation by Reuters
• Rice production in Indonesia by Wikipedia
• Imported rice from India coming in December 2011 by Detik
• Indonesia’s rice imports reached IDR 997m until September 2011 by Detik
• 200,000 tons of Sumatran rice for export by Detik
• Controversy around East Java Logistics to import more rice by MetroTV
• The trade volume of rice supply between Indonesia and Vietnam by Detik
• Row between Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Trade around rice imports, May 2011, by Cuplik
• Farmers in East Java to oppose rice import by Kompas
