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Experts call for staple food diversification
Combining rice with alternative staple foods is good for your health and the nation’s food self-sufficiency, a nutritionist says
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Combining rice with alternative staple foods is good for your health and the nation’s food self-sufficiency, a nutritionist says.
Nelis Imanningsih, from the Bogor Nutrition Research and Development Center, said that
eating a range of staple foods was good for the body because each contained different carbohydrate chains, which complemented each other.
“Rice contains complex carbohydrate chains, while tubers like cassava and yam have a shorter carbohydrate chain, oligo sacharida, which is more easily digested. If we consume both, they complement each other,” she said.
Nelis said Indonesia produced many alternative staple foods to rice, including corn, yam and cassava. She said that the replacement food that most resembled rice was corn.
“Besides containing carbohydrates, rice also contains 7-8 percent protein, which is vitamin B. This is what other non-rice staple foods don’t have. However, we can compensate by adding more protein-based foods, such as cereals, into our diet,” she said.
“We need to change Indonesia’s eating habits so that we can have food resilience. If we are short of rice supply and we are used to eating many kinds of foods, we will survive,” she said.
Arum Atmawikarta from the National Planning Development Board said that the policy introduced during president Soeharto’s era of encouraging people to eat rice was a mistake.
“We should let people eat foods produced locally. Rice is high maintenance; it requires good irrigation and fertilizer, yet it is vulnerable to climate change.”
He said Indonesia’s traditional staple foods had good nutritional compositions.
“We should let people eat foods produced locally. Rice is high maintenance ... yet it is vulnerable to climate change.”
As examples he cited sagu, a staple food of Maluku, which was usually served with vegetable and fish, and bananas, a staple food of Kalimantan’s Mandar tribe, which was typically cooked with coconut milk and fish.
“The most important thing is not eating rice, but rather the nutritional makeup of your meal,” he said.
Last October, the government launched a program called “One Day Without Rice”, which was aimed to reduce the nation’s dependence on rice.
The Agriculture Ministry plans to cut rice consumption by 1.5 percent per year, with the goal to increase the national rice surplus to avoid the need to import food.
Indonesia’s rice consumption stands at 139 kilograms per capita per year, according to the National Survey on Social Economics.
Indonesia produces 38 million tons of rice per year and consumes 33 million tons of rice per year, the survey showed.
The consumption rate is high compared to Thailand, which produces 20 millions tons a year, but consumes 10 million tons a year, with a per capita consumption of 70 kilograms.
Residents on Flores Island have already learned to prioritize food self-sufficiency.
Rafael Minggu, a resident of Ende, Flores Island, said he ate alternative staple foods; usually bananas
or cassava with vegetables and chicken. He said he had been encouraging others to adopt his eating habits.
“We can’t rely on rice all the time. We need to eat a variety of staple foods, so that when there is a food crisis, we can eat any staple food. It’s a matter of changing your habits and mind-set,” he said.
