Comments

We are not a Hungry Nation. We have our resources available that we can make use of but because of our laziness to farm the land we ended up getting hungry. Don't compare your lifestyle with ours because we are all different. Traditionally we are still adapting to our ancestors way of living where sometimes we may skip meals otherwise we have a wide range of edible fruits that we take everyday and this becomes our everyday food.

I think nutrition is something to be more concerned about than hunger. In my experience growing up in a very rural village, we don't always have enough food in the house but we never went hungry. Not once. If I don't have enough food in the morning, then I'll go to the garden or into the forest and when I come back home, it's always with enough food. Not always enough for a "balanced diet", but food nevertheless. Neighbors were (and still are) very helpful. If I need some food right now, I can borrow from them. And when they need food later, they know they can always ask me. As a Papua New Guinean from a rural village, I really don't agree with the title. And as mentioned in one of the comments previously, fruits, nuts, vegetables, are not considered real food here.

Thank you Dr Neelesh for a thorough and simple analysis on the 2019-20 HIES report. There is a change in methodology in this HIES compared to the previous. Past reports were on the income approach and this report they change to the consumption approach. Can these be the cause of slight increase in poverty rate? If they would have remained on the income approach, my guess is the poverty rate would have reduced even further. Please your comments would be appreciated. Vinaka

PNG rural farmers rarely eat three meals a day. Breakfast is often skipped because work needs to be done before the day gets hot or the distance to the farming area is quite far. The only meal eaten as family is dinner, and in most cases is a heavy meal. Did the study consider this aspect when analyzing its data, or did it use the western lifestyle of three meals per day? Three meals/day is not PNG's lifestyle.

Thank you Dr. Goundar for the interesting read. Is there any analysis done on the sectors that are suffering the most? It would be good to see the impact i.e. pre-covid vs post covid.

This bar graph does not mean anything if it doesn't have basic stats (e.g. mean, CI..). I don't see the number of people interviewed, at each province, urban vs. rural, proportions (sample size/population of province)? Categories 'Rural' and 'Urban' are too broad, you need to be specific. I have a feeling that if you had increased your sample size(s) then you would find that 'PNG is not the hungry country' (except probably in urban squatter settlements in Port Moresby and Lae).

I grew up in a coastal village of PNG. Our main meal was in the evenings when we would have balanced meals. Breakfast was light and lunch was made up of fruits and vegetable or nut snacks. Since we lived near the sea, fish was in abundance. We would grill some for lunch and stored most of it for dinner when the whole family sat down to eat together. We had grilled bananas over the fire or simply had boiled kaukau and tea or water for breakfast. Today times have changed and I am now in my late 50s. I live in an urban area and am privileged to have been educated and I understand the value of nutrition in food. So I raised my children on good and balanced nutrition. On the other hand, I noticed that back in the villages, rice has become a staple diet, overtaking the once famous sweet potato and bananas. When asked if there is food to cook, many younger people say there is no food, meaning there is no rice in the house; even if there is abundance of local or garden vegetables. So when you discuss that PNG is a hungry country, you might like to consider the type of food in abundance in specific locations studied,and the choice of food people have and at what meal of the day a certain food type is mostly eaten. For example, sweet potato and banana are usually eaten for breakfast but they have been replaced by bread and biscuits in certain rural households. In the very remote villages, where store goods are still rare, many families have very light meals for both breakfast and dinner, mostly starch and green leafy vegetables. Protein is often not readily available at dinner times. Lunch is not usually eaten as a full meal as most people snack on fruits or easily found vegetables around the houses. Also for most remote rural villages, plentiful eating is evident only during feasts for ceremonial obligations, for example, during wedding or funerals, when many people gather together to prepare and cook local vegetables and protein like pork and fish, in big amounts. But yes, good nutrition and its importance in the development of a child or health of the working adult is very important and needs to be emphasized in the villages. Even people in urban areas need to be aware of this as well. Nevertheless, Most Papua New Guineans in the rural areas really don't mind the nutrition part of food; as long as they have eaten a meal and are satisfied, they are not hungry.

So, did you witness a very malnourished population in general or even those within your study areas? Have you considered the varying metabolism of people exposed to different nutritional habits or conditions? Even the Western world is considering dietary fasting and other not so common diet practices as beneficial to health and well-being. Some of these populations have done it for generations. In many households, like in the rural areas when you are busy, you don't feel hungry, so you continue working in your gardens or do your fishing and hunting. So you might eat one or two meals a day. You might miss breakfast because having it might take up your time or make you feel heavy and you won't be able to work as efficiently as you would want. Hence, the title of your blog can be misleading. Or define your terms to suit the PNG context as suggested by other comments made already.

Culturally Papua New Guineans are not or do not have 3 meals a day in rural areas. So you normally will not see them trying to make breakfast. They only have it when opportunity presents itself. Otherwise they just have the main course in the evening. Yes of course they have others fruits, anything that is edible during the day. Life is different in urban Areas.

In my village in Jiwaka it is unusual for people to eat three meals a day. Also fruit peanuts, ripe banana, pineapple etc are not considered 'real food'. So if someone has eaten fruits etc, they might say, "mi no kaikai wanpela strongpela kaikai" i.e. I haven't eaten real food. Are those kinds of differences considered as well in this study?

I don't know. I haven't seen the questions people were asked about domestic violence. But in any survey, let alone cross cultural surveys like these, the terms used must be tested to see if they have the same meaning in English as they do in Tok Pisin and even if when do, can the answers be used to define a condition. In the case of the word "hungry" (I have only seen the questions listed in the Blog) it seems that the survey placed importance on things like three meals per day, never missing a meal, not having enough to eat and so on. The responses to these questions defined whether a person suffered from "hunger". Ever since I lived in a village for 18 months and accompanied people to their gardens or other places, I have stopped worrying if I skipped a meal, or even if I feel hungry - it goes away after a while. It's a common thing in rural PNG not to eat regularly nor to satisfy hunger immediately. To answer your question I need to know how was "domestic violence" defined in the survey. It is usually thought as physical violence but in Australia "coercive control" is now recognised and it may have no physical violence associated with it at all. In addition, violent acts or acts of coercive control are probably easier to remember than how much or what you had to eat. So questions about them may be more legitimate. I should also say that I have almost no experience in PNG urban settings.

Although my experience is limited (UPNG 1975-79, Rotary Foundation Project to Alleviate Malnutrition in WP 2017-), I concur with the authors that hunger is not uncommon. I commenced my project in the Strickland Bosavi region (Upper/Middle Fly) of Western Province in November 2018 and food was short throughout the region then. I personally witnessed hunger. One young man doing my train the trainer course had to take a day or two off so he could go looking for bush tucker. My course ran for 2 weeks and, during planning with my in-country collaborator, Sally Lloyd of Mougulu, I wanted to make provision for catering in my meagre budget but Sally told me that she would ask participants to bring food with them. Of course, they had no food to bring and our meagre rations left many participants hungry. Despite these hardships, the volunteer trainees completed the course in good spirits. Of course this mini taim hangre might have been the exception, but I do not think so. Although hunger exists (which it should never be in 2021), perhaps the even more important issue is the malnutrition that occurs, even with a full belly. The limited local diet is invariably low in energy, certainly low in protein and in fats and oils. My emphasis is on the nutrition of pregnant women, breast feeding mothers and children from conception to 5 years old. The productive capacity of the next generation is seriously limited by a poor diet and an unacceptably high incidence of malnutrition at critical stages in the child's development that may impact on their productive capacity later in life. The importance of this can not be overestimated! Regardless, all people in PNG (men, women and children) deserve the luxury of a plentiful diet of nutritious food that enhances their wellbeing and quality of life!