FEF lecture urges swift action as food policies drive child malnutrition

Makati City, Philippines — October 8, 2025. The Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF) convened leading policymakers, business leaders, academics, and development advocates for the 7th Paderanga-Varela Memorial Lecture (PVML) at Ascott Makati. With the theme “Bata, Bayan, Bukas: Reducing Childhood Malnutrition and Stunting through Economic Freedom,” this year’s lecture highlighted the urgent need to treat nutrition not merely as a health and nutrition issue, but as an agricultural and economic policy challenge.

Over a hundred participants from the academe, government, private sector, and civil society attended the 7th Paderanga-Varela Memorial Lecture.

The lecture opened with FEF’s award-winning short documentary on stunting, malnutrition, and agricultural policy, which recently won the Atlas Network’s Public Policy Impact Award in New York. The film underscored how child undernutrition and agricultural inefficiencies are intertwined challenges requiring urgent national action. “Malnutrition is not only a public health issue—it is an economic freedom issue,” said FEF President Calixto V. Chikiamco in his opening remarks. 

The scale of the crisis

Despite modest progress, child malnutrition remains alarmingly high. One in four Filipino children under five is stunted, a condition that irreversibly limits physical growth, brain development, and lifetime earning potential. The Philippines ranks fifth in East Asia and the Pacific for prevalence of stunting and is among the ten countries with the highest number of stunted children worldwide. 

Stunting means that the person has “low height” for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition.

In terms of the economic toll, undernutrition costs the Philippines US$8.5 billion (₱496 billion) annually—around 2–3% of GDP—through lost productivity, higher healthcare costs, and diminished human capital.

Cross-sectoral solutions

Keynote speaker Atty. Rosalina Bascao, Deputy Executive Director of the Department of Health’s National Nutrition Council (NNC), stressed the need for stronger policy coordination, adequate public financing, and deeper engagement of local governments.

FROM LEFT: Atty. Benedicta ‘Dick’ Du-Baladad and Dr. Mildred Guirindola, who presented on childhood malnutrition and economic freedom.

In her presentation, Atty. Benedicta “Dick” Du-Baladad, CEO and Founding Partner of BDB Law, reframed nutrition as a strategic business investment:

She described numerous Filipino children as being “born with promise” but whose potential is “diminished before their second birthday.”

“[This] is not just a statistic, but a lifelong economic penalty,” she said.

According to Du-Baladad, agricultural deregulation or market access brings human and social development by providing children “freedom from hunger and dependency, to invest in human capital, and to participate” in the country’s politics and economy.

She added that uncurbed malnutrition “directly undermines economic freedom” by limiting individual capacity, fostering people’s dependency on social safety nets, and distorting the labor market.

Du-Baladad urged the private sector to integrate nutrition into business strategies, workforce development, and food system reforms, warning that failure to act risks reversing hard-won gains in malnutrition reduction.

Evidence and pathways forward

Dr. Mildred Guirindola of the DOST–Food and Nutrition Research Institute (DOST-FNRI) presented the 2023 National Nutrition Survey findings, underscoring persistent regional disparities in child nutrition. 

Her presentation revealed that 23.6% of Filipino children under five are stunted, meaning nearly one in four children are already at risk of impaired cognitive development, poor educational outcomes, and lower lifetime earnings. Stunting prevalence is highest in BARMM (34.3%) and SOCCSKSARGEN (33.0%), compared with only 16.1% in the Ilocos Region, highlighting stark regional disparities.

Other key findings include:

• Wasting (low weight for height): 5.6% of children under five, with rates peaking in MIMAROPA and Caraga.
• Underweight: 15.1% of children under five, with the highest burden in MIMAROPA and Zamboanga Peninsula.
• Overweight/obesity: at 3.7%, the highest in Central Luzon and CAR.
• Micronutrient deficiencies: 11.4% of preschool children are anemic, while 13.9% are vitamin A deficient, conditions that impair immunity and child development.

Household-level data showed that 31.4% of Filipino households experience moderate to severe food insecurity, while 2.7% report severe food insecurity, equivalent to households skipping meals or having no food for a day or more. Diet diversity is also poor: fewer than 15% of children aged 6–23 months meet the minimum dietary diversity recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Malnutrition, particularly stunting, is not only a health issue but also a barrier to human capital, productivity, and national progress,” Guirindola stressed. Stunted children are more likely to drop out of school, earn less as adults, and face lifelong health risks, with their economic productivity as adults clipped by more than 10% in their lifetime.

She concluded by underscoring the need for cross-sectoral action: scaling up maternal and child nutrition programs, transforming food systems to make healthy diets more affordable, strengthening water and sanitation, and embedding nutrition in social protection and education programs.

“Reducing stunting is not just saving lives. It is securing our nation’s future,” Guirindola added.

DISCUSSANTS: FEF Fellow Dr. Fermin Adriano, IFPRI Emeritus Fellow Dr. Howarth Bouis, and MMB Co-Convenor Justin Muyot shared their insights on the main presentations.

After the presentations, experts shared their cross-sector insights:

FEF Fellow and former Department of Agriculture (DA) Undersecretary Dr. Fermin Adriano underscored that high food prices, driven largely by protectionist agricultural policies, are the single biggest driver of malnutrition in the Philippines. Presenting economic data, he noted that the poorest households spend around 60% of their total income on food, so any rise in prices directly translates into hunger and nutritional deprivation.

Adriano pointed to the Department of Agriculture’s recent decision to maintain the current rice import ban and its plan to revert the tariff on rice from 15% back to 35% until the end of 2025. These policies, he stressed, only make rice—the country’s staple food—more expensive, straining household budgets and limiting access to diverse and nutritious diets.

Meanwhile, Justin Muyot, Co-Convenor of the Malusog at Matalinong Bata (MMB) Coalition—the country’s largest alliance of advocacy groups, academics, and citizens committed to fighting stunting—acknowledged that high food prices are a critical barrier to adequate nutrition. But he also highlighted another dimension: Filipino families’ eating habits and cultural practices.

Even among wealthier households, Muyot observed, many children still fail to meet recommended nutrient intake. He stressed the need for education and information campaigns to correct misconceptions about food, promote balanced diets, and empower parents to make better nutrition choices.

Finally, Dr. Howarth Bouis, Emeritus Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and recipient of the 2016 World Food Prize, drew from over four decades of research in the Philippines to show that stunting among preschool children is strongly correlated with household income, reinforcing the direct link between poverty and chronic undernutrition.

Bouis also emphasized that nutrition begins even before birth. Maternal nutrition during pregnancy and breastfeeding, he argued, is critical for fetal development and can determine whether a child enters life with the foundation for healthy growth or faces an immediate nutritional deficit.

Thrive is a charity organization that aims to deliver healthy food to hungry schoolchildren. Since 2012, it has reported serving 4.7 million meals across 16 schools in Bangladesh and the Philippines.

After the discussions, charity group Thrive introduced its cause to the participants. Since 2012, Thrive has reported serving 4.7 million meals across 16 schools in Bangladesh and the Philippines. Through a community-led approach involving public schools, students, and mothers, Thrive aims to “deliver healthy food to hungry schoolchildren.” Co-founder Priscilla Heffelfinger and Board Member Jack Perry shared the group’s goal of raising ₱68.5 million by 2030 to feed 10,000 Filipino children and employ 200 mothers in 40 partner schools for an entire year.

About the lecture
The Paderanga-Varela Memorial Lecture (PVML) is organized annually by the Foundation for Economic Freedom in honor of its late co-founders, former Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga, Jr., and former Education Undersecretary Francisco Varela. Since 2016, PVML has served as a platform for dialogue on national issues such as land policy, inclusive capitalism, education reform, and energy security.

You may access the presentations here.

To know more about Thrive Philippines, click here.