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The Vietnam News

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Vietnam aims to boost drinking of milk

HANOI - During long years of war and severe poverty in Vietnam, milk and meat were true luxuries only the rich could afford. Many children went blind from lack of vitamin A. Countless others experienced stunted growth that has kept the whole population short and thin. But after 30 years of peace, the communist country has overcome many of these problems and is now boasting unprecedented economic growth that it hopes will translate into building a taller, stronger people.

An ambitious plan submitted for government approval last month aims to increase the average height of men and women by about 2 1/2 inches over the next 25 years with milk as the main ingredient powering that spurt. "The Vietnamese people on average are shorter than many people in the world as well as compared with people in the region, and they're also weaker physically," said Duong Nghiep Chi, director of Vietnam's Sport Science Institute in charge of the strategic plan. He noted that the Japanese went through a similar growth spurt after World War II.

Since the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the average height of men has shot up from 5-feet-2 to 5-feet-4 and in women from 4-feet-9 to 5 feet. Weights have also increased an average of 18 pounds for men and about 6 1/2 pounds for women over the past 30 years, with food becoming more widely available only in the past decade. In comparison, adults in the United States, who were bigger to begin with, gained about an inch over the past 40 years, with men now an average height of 5-feet-9 1/2 and women about 5-feet-4.

But studies in Vietnam have found that despite the recent leap in size and fast-growing milk sales over the past decade, many children still aren't drinking enough milk or getting all the vitamins and minerals they need, such as calcium and zinc. It's partly because of limited resources in a nation where the average income is still only about $420 a year, with poverty concentrated in the countryside where most of Vietnam's 82 million people live. Perhaps an even bigger challenge will be promoting knowledge and awareness. Nutrition experts say many adults think milk and cheese are just for young children, who often stop eating dairy products after age 2. Some new mothers also don't believe they produce enough breast milk, leading them to substitute their own milk with formula.

Chi's plan hopes to overcome those misconceptions by providing nutritional guidelines about what children should eat and how much. A pilot project, if approved by the prime minister, also would select 10,000 children ages 6-18 throughout the country and supply them with free milk for two years to see how much they grow compared to those not drinking milk. "If this program is approved, we will launch awareness campaigns among parents on how to give children a better diet," Chi said. "We will hold more campaigns to help create habits for the Vietnamese people to drink more milk. In the past, they did not understand the importance of this and they also did not believe that milk was an important factor for their growth."

But as Vietnamese wealth continues to rise — mainly in the capital of Hanoi and southern Ho Chi Minh City — some parents who may themselves have gone hungry during the war or in the years of isolation that followed, are determined to see their children grow bigger. Mothers are often spotted stuffing spoonfuls of food into their children's mouths. And last year before Vietnam hosted a major sporting event, many local newspapers wrote articles questioning whether a famous Vietnamese pop singer should perform because she was too short and thin to represent the country.

At the same time, some experts fear that Vietnamese children could follow the fat trend seen in other southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore and Thailand, which are now struggling to keep youngsters' weight in check. "It's often rich families with very good economic conditions — they have a very good house, air conditioners and microwaves," said Nguyen Thi Lam, deputy director of Vietnam's National Institute of Nutrition charged with tackling the overweight and obesity issue. "They have very sweet food available like Coca-Cola and other sweet drinks, and chocolate is more available than in the normal group."

Chi says it's vital that Vietnam not leap from undernourished to overweight but that its people instead work toward a healthy in-between with a balanced diet that now includes more rice and meat. In addition, he said the national plan will also provide guidelines to ensure that children are getting enough exercise and maintaining active lifestyles.

"Many rich people in Vietnam, they don't know what should be the best way to feed their children even though they have money to spend," he said. "If we do not have a proper approach as the country is getting more prosperous economically, the people will not be as strong built as their parents or older generations."

By Margie Mason - The Associated Press - November 07, 2004.