Last Monday, June 8, Senator Imee Marcos claimed that there were no starving children during Martial Law under the dictatorship of her father, the late President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
This happened at an assembly held at Barangay Buhangin, Davao City, where Sen. Imee went on to distribute her own Nutribun with her name on the wrapper and commended the impact of the Nutribun project to the Filipino masses, stating that alongside Nutribun, the Marcos administration also provided Klim Milk.
She said that Filipinos who experienced the advent of the Nutribun remained strong and energetic today due to the nutritional benefits of the bread.
This is false.
The Facts: Contrary to the fabrications of the Marcos family and their allies, the Nutribun Project was a program spearheaded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) during the height of the Martial Law period.
The team responsible for investigating the conditions of the Filipino population during the 1970s found that the high mortality rate among children aged 1 to 4 indicated the need for a more intensive nutrition program.
https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pnaag927.pdf.
An entire 383-page report details the proposal of the USAID Nutrition Office to develop a “ready-to-eat bakery-bun snack food for schoolchildren.”
It was a stop-gap measure to stop hunger in children at that time and not the reason for no hunger in the Philippines, as imagined by Sen. Imee.
Read the full story on The Baguio Chronicle.