City Councilor Marissa Abella urges food establishment owners to offer brown rice in their menu. (davaotoday.com file photo by Zea Io Ming C. Capistrano)
DAVAO CITY, Philippines — The Davao City Council urged restaurants, food chains, and other food establishments in the city to promote brown rice in support of the program by the Department of Agriculture.
In a resolution passed Tuesday, owners of food establishments are encouraged to include brown rice in their menu in line with the agriculture department’s #BROWN4good challenge.
The program aims to raise the awareness of the benefits of eating brown rice, which is much healthier compared to white rice, said City Councilor Marissa Salvador Abella, chair of the SP committee on agriculture and food.
In a City Information Office dispatch, Abella cited study that shows brown rice is superior in terms of protein, dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
Brown rice also help in reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, cancer, cardio vascular-diseases and lowers blood pressure.
Abella added “consuming brown rice can help achieve rice sufficiency and help Filipino farmers improve income because compared to white rice, it has 10 percent higher milling recovery than white rice.”
“The additional supply will also help decrease Philippine importation of rice,” she said.
The #BROWN4good encourages netizens to post photo of their meal consisting of brown rice on social media accounts using the hashtag #Brown4good and the region of the netizen as caption. One post is equivalent to one cup of brown rice donated to charities.
Abella said Davao region aims to achieve 50,000 posts equivalent to 100 sacks of brown rice donated by the DA to charities.
“For the entire country, we are aiming to attain one million hashtags from FB, Instagram and Twitter, and if achieved DA will give 3.5 million worth of brown rice to charities for the entire nation,” Abella said. (davaotoday.com)
