That good old Nutribun, popular in the 1970s, is making a comeback.
The Office of the Vice President, in partnership with the Department of Education (DepEd), pilot-tested the program “Pansarap”, which is a supplemental nutrition intervention by distributing nutritional buns for undernourished learners, in a public school in Davao City.
In a press statement, the OVP announced that the first recipients of the nutritional buns that were created by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), through the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), were the 733 undernourished kindergartens to grade six students at Lower Tamugan Elementary School in Barangay Tamugan in Davao City.
School principal Brembhot Eyas expressed gratitude to the OVP as the number of undernourished children in their school is alarming.
Undersecretary Zuleika T. Lopez of the OVP said the program is an initiative of Vice President Sara Duterte, who is also the Education Secretary.
The nutritious bread, which is Halal certified, comes in 10 flavors and will be distributed to students from Mondays to Fridays for 120 days.
NUTRIBUN HISTORY
The Nutribun of the 1970s was a bread borne out of good intentions. Nutribun was designed as a convenient “ready-to-eat complete meal” for public elementary school feeding programs to combat child malnutrition in the Philippines. Schools in economically depressed areas where children weighed below the normal weight for their age were the priority consumers of the Nutribun.
The baking of the Nutribun was done in schools with facilities for baking or by commercial bakeries, as reported by Maura M. Bean of the U.S. Department of Agriculture research center, which developed the soy-fortified flours for donations under the Food for Peace program. The Catholic Relief Services, the School Health Division, the Bureau of Public Schools, and the Department of Education and Culture took care of the distribution and coordination on the ground.
NATIONWIDE PROGRAM
The OVP statement said it is planning to bring the program to other parts of the country with high cases of malnutrition among children and will be soon implemented in Upi, Maguindanao, targeting 1,893 undernourished schoolchildren.
The Department of Science and Technology’s Food and Nutrition Research Institute (DOST-FNRI) conducted the first-ever online soft launching of “Ang Pagbabalik ng Nutribun” on July 29, 2020, via Zoom.
