Malnutrition.
Defined as “deficiencies, excesses, or imbalances in a person’s intake of energy and/or nutrients” by the WHO, malnutrition spans a wide range of conditions ranging from obesity and overweight to “micronutrient-related deficiencies” – or a lack or excess of certain nutrients in one’s diet – to what we usually think of as malnutrition: undernutrition.
As of 2022, malnutrition, specifically undernutrition, plagued 390 million adults, 190 million children aged 5-19, and 149 million children under the age of 5. In total, that makes about 729 million people across the world, or a little over 9% of the global population, that suffer from the wide range of challenges and hardships that come with not having enough food to eat.
This Monday, however, Indonesia began to tackle this seemingly insurmountable challenge and launched the first stage of a new free meal program. A cornerstone of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s campaign for office last year, this program aims to feed 82.9 million people (almost 30% of the country’s population) across the 17,000+ islands that make up the Southeast Asian nation by 2029.
The first stage of the free meal program is set to feed 19.47 million and is, much like the program as a whole, aimed overwhelmingly at school going children and pregnant women, geared at providing one free meal per day for students ranging all the way from early education to senior high school that meets one third of the daily caloric requirements for children. But despite the far-reaching benefits of this program – both in its first stage and its end goal, the costs of implementing this plan seem equally as dramatic.
In its first stage alone, the program is projected to cost 71 trillion rupiah (the Indonesian national currency), or $4.3 billion USD. This money would be then leveraged to purchase “6.7 million tons of rice, 1.2 million tons of chicken, 500,000 tons of beef, 1 million tons of fish, vegetable and fruit, and 4 million kiloliters of milk” and set up at least 5000 kitchens across the nation.
About 2000 different cooperatives, or businesses owned by their users or members (rather than external investors), are reported to also pitch in and provide vegetables, fish, meat, rice, milk, eggs, and other foods. In addition, the nation has also imported cows from Australia to supplement milk production.
The program as a whole is estimated to cost 450 trillion rupiah or $28 billion USD, a point of concern and censure for Prabowo’s critics. Many worry that the financial burden of the program would put undue strain on the state budget, leading to greater state debt, and that the large amount of food purchased, coupled with Indonesia’s already profound import of various foodstuffs, could further prove detrimental to the nation’s economy.
Regardless of the potential economic challenges it poses, Indonesia’s new free meal program undoubtedly holds the potential to curb malnutrition across both the Southeast Asian nation and the globe as a whole.
But more than that, as we enter 2025, this new program seems to hold the spark of promise for a year filled with solutions to the countless challenges we all face. As we move into the new year, let’s hold true to this example set by Indonesia and make 2025 the year of hope and positive change.
