BAGUIO CITY, Feb. 14 (PIA) -- The Regional Nutrition Committee (RNC) engages government workers in a healthy lifestyle and weight reduction in a search with cash incentives at stake.

The RNC came up with a regional weight management project through healthy weight loss ways such as diet modification, increase on physical activity and education/behavior modification pilot tested last year.

National Nutrition Council Regional Coordinator Rita Papey said the project was borne out of the alarming results of a study on the nutritional assessment of government employees conducted in 2017 which showed that more than 50 percent are either overweight or obese. With this finding, there is a need for a call for government agencies to have a management program, she said.

The projects goal is for employees in the region to become healthy and productive, reduce the prevalence of malnutrition such as obesity and achieve normal weight and for agencies to adopt the program and reduce the occurrence of non-communicable diseases (NCD).

Papey said obesity and overweight are risk factors for NCDs such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, cancer that affect a persons productivity and quality of life. Globally and nationally, NCDs are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality of which 30 percent are generally related to heart disease.

The search duration is from March to June 2020.

For the agency category, to be awarded will be agencies with the best healthy lifestyle program and highest percent reduction on identified indicators.

The agency must have an action plan and have conducted baseline and endline nutrition assessment of employees.

For the individual/employee category, employee/s with improved nutritional status from underweight to normal, highest reduction in waist circumference and with the highest reduction in weight will be recognized.

Moreover, there is a suggested government menu developed by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute called Pinggang Pinoy as guide for agencies in the procurement of food during conduct of seminars, workshops or meetings.

Papey said the Pinggang Pinoy or the food plate model was adopted by the sectoral committee of the Regional Development Council on Social Development. The model menu contains 50 percent fruit and vegetables, 33 percent rice and 17 percent protein. (JDP/SCA-PIA-CAR)

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RNC holds healthy lifestyle, weight loss search in govt offices - Philippine Information Agency