Veggietizer (Veggie Meat) Feasibility Study

Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

A. Rationale

            “Health for all Filipinos” is the vision of the Department of Health, thus, their mission is to ensure accessibility and quality of health care and to improve the quality of life of the Filipinos.

          Malnutrition remains one of the critical problems in the Philippines. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization Report (1998), the present economic situation of the country further aggravated the malnutrition problem with about twenty-eight million Filipinos unable to buy food to meet their nutritional requirements.

What Are Hunger and Malnutrition?

          Hunger is the way the body signals that it needs to eat. Once a person is able to eat enough food to satisfy the body’s needs, he or she stops being hungry. Teens can feel hungry a lot because their rapidly growing and developing bodies demand extra food.

          Malnutrition is the medical condition caused by an improper or inadequate diet and nutrition. It is one of the gravest threats to the world’s public health and is the biggest contributor to child mortality. People with malnutrition lack the necessary amounts of certain elements that are essential to growth, such as vitamins, salts and proteins. Someone can be malnourished for a long or short period of time, and the condition may be mild or severe. Malnutrition can affect a person’s physical and mental health. People who are suffering from malnutrition are more likely to get sick; in very severe cases, they may even die from its effects.

          Kids who are malnourished don’t grow as tall as they should (a condition referred to as stunted growth) and they are underweight as well. (People can also become underweight because they have an illness, and some are underweight because of their genes.)

What Causes Hunger and Malnutrition?

          The most important causes of hunger have their roots in economic, social and nutritional factors, having to do with the ways in which the production and distribution of food are organized in the world. People suffer from hunger because they don’t have the capacity to provide food to eat. This situation may be connected with their status in life as well as in the problems faced by agriculture like food distribution. Malnutrition, however, is not merely caused by hunger. People may be malnourished due to poor eating habits, stomach or intestinal conditions/dysfunction, as well as illnesses because some conditions prevent them from digesting or absorbing their food properly. If you don’t get enough of one specific nutrient, that’s a form of malnutrition (although it doesn’t mean you will necessarily become seriously ill).