Unhealthy habits leads to malnutrition
Leo Wahyudi S, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A little boy of two years old was crying for a pack of snack when a vendor passed by a small alley in a dense dwellings in Central Jakarta.
He was grabbing his mother's hand begging badly to satisfy his childhood desires. Unwilling to see her beloved little boy crying, the mother just fulfilled his demand.
Cheap snacks tempt children like no other foods. They look good and taste good, too. Like a pack of crackers or dry noodle that cost less than Rp 1,000, the snacks too often worked well for many parents to calm down their children.
No wonder then that many parents spend more money on these tantalizing foods rather than on milk and other such nutritious fare.
Fitri, 29, said she used to spend Rp 3,000 a day buying snacks for her two children, while she only allocated a little of her money for milk as it cost her simply Rp 50,000 per month.
She would buy her children any snack they wanted, saying she found it hard to say no to them.
Sometimes, she just gave the money to her children and did not control what they bought for snacks, because she was unaware of the importance of proper nutrition for her children.
"I found that my kids bought cheap snacks such as biscuits or jello," said Fitri.
Another mother of two, Nina, said she did not know what kinds of snacks her children were eating.
"The most important thing is to make sure my kids are happy," Nina said, adding that she gets Rp 20,000 from her husband for her daily needs.
But now, Fitri and Nina have vowed to be more careful about what their children eat, thanks to a recent healthy lifestyle campaign that took place in their neighborhood.
Both Fitri and Nina live in the Bungur subdistrict in Central Jakarta, where research on children's nutrition and lifestyles was conducted between 1999 and 2002 by the University of Indonesia's School of Medicine, with the support of the Australian-New Zealand Women's Organization.
The research, which covered 566 children, found that in 2002 9.8 percent of the children under the age of five were suffering from acute malnutrition. In 1999, that figure was 14 percent.
Of the total average monthly income of a family, some 19 percent is spent for snacks and only 4 percent for medical care, according to Trevino Pakasi, one of the researchers.
Ninety percent of the parents who responded to the survey bought junk food snacks for their children. And less than 30 percent spent more money for milk than snacks.
Junk food or snacks contains various kinds of additive and preservative substances that could reduce children's appetite and would in turn reduce their nutritious intakes.
According to research findings, the lacking of nutritious intakes would likely inhibit the children development, said dr. Eva Suarthana of the University of Indonesia's School of Medicine.
A child will grow thin and weak and sometimes pale are some signs of malnutrition state. As a result, children will tend to get sick frequently and lose their weights.
Eva underlined that the major factor in malnutrition was not poverty, but a lack of public awareness about proper nutrition.
The public campaign that followed the research has resulted in an increased awareness on the part of local residents.
Ipah, 32, a mother of three, said she was now very strict about her children's snacks.
"I try to control what my kids eat," Ipah said.
Ipah, who used to spend Rp 1,000 a day on snacks for each of her children, now buys eight cartons of milk which cost her about 120,000 per month.
According to data from the Ministry of Health, in 2000 there were about 660,000 children in Jakarta and 2.6 percent are in a state of acute malnutrition.
Jane Smith, vice president of the Australian-New Zealand Women's Organization, and the wife of the Australian ambassador to Indonesia, said her organization was working to increase awareness of the importance of eating nutritious foods.
"We have to educate the children and the parents that every mouthful of food should have nutritious value," Smith said.