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Higher milk consumption could help curb stunting: Experts
Experts said during a recent forum on regional malnutrition that consuming more milk could help tackle child malnutrition and childhood stunting in Indonesia.
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Got milk?: Consuming more milk and focused programs on animal protein intake could help reduce childhood stunting in Indonesia. (Shutterstock/nafterphoto)
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s Indonesia continues its fight against stunting, experts say increasing milk consumption could be a solution for tackling the country's persisting malnutrition problem.
The prevalence of stunting in Indonesia's child population remains high, although it saw a decrease to 30.8 percent in 2018 from 37.2 percent in 2013, according to the Health Ministry's 2018 Basic Health Research (Riskesdas). Still, the figure is higher than the 20 percent standard of the World Health Organization (WHO).
The government aims to further reduce the prevalence of stunted children to 28 percent this year.
Ahmad Syafiq, who heads the University of Indonesia's Center for Nutrition and Health Studies, said the government should focus on animal protein intake to curb childhood stunting.
He said the government's efforts to promote higher vegetable and fruit consumption among children was misdirected and biased toward tackling obesity – the other leg of the double burden of malnutrition – rather than stunting.
"If the problem is stunting, then what we need is higher animal protein intake in children. We should seriously revisit milk consumption," Syafiq said in Jakarta on May 2, during The Habibie Center's Talking ASEAN discussion forum on "Overcoming Malnutrition in Children of Southeast Asia".
Syafiq said that milk consumption in Indonesia was very low, citing 2018 ASEAN data that showed the country's annual milk consumption in 2016 was 11.8 liters per capita.
