Only days after launching her cookbook titled “Pinakbest” carrying the Marcos family treasured recipes, Senator Imee Marcos took to social media to promote yet again the controversial Nutribun in time for Christmas.
Channeling her own version of Netflix character Wednesday Addams, Marcos, in a 33-second video on Tiktok, followed from American singer Mariah Carey’s best-selling all-time favorite “All I Want For Christmas Is You” and spinned her own version.
At the start, a grim-faced Marcos mumbled the lines, “I don’t want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need.”
Followed with, “I don’t care about the queso, bibingka, or lechon. No, I don’t want just any kind of mamon.”
Right before the climax, she commanded, “Bake my wish well done!”
Thereafter, she exclaimed, “All I want for Christmas is, Nutribun!”
The video earned mixed reactions from the netizens with some expressing support while others slammed the idea over age-old historical disputes concerning the controversial Nutribun.
What is Nutribun?
It can be recalled too that the senator had been pushing for the revival of the Nutribun program, which was claimed by many including the lawmaker herself and her family to have been started by her late father, former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
The Nutribun is a bread project distributed to various elementary schools in the ‘70s to support feeding programs supposedly to combat child malnutrition.
True enough in a press release last September 11, Marcos indeed claimed on record that the Nutribun project was indeed the brainchild of her father.
“Ito’y kasabay na rin ng pagdiriwang nitong nagdaang Linggo ng ika-105 na kaarawan ng kanyang ama na si dating Pangulong Ferdinand Marcos Sr. na nagpasimuno sa Nutribun Feeding Program noong dekada ’70 na maraming bansot na bata ang lumusog,” she said in the press release.
The lawmaker also claimed that no child went hungry during her father’s term because of the Nutribun.
It can also be remembered that former Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, who was also vocal in his admiration for Marcos Sr., supported the program and in fact, wanted to institutionalize the Nutribun program in the city.
Prior to Moreno, his predecessor, former Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada actually revived the program in 2014 covering thousands of students from over 70 public elementary schools surveyed.
The truth
But is the Nutribun project really a brainchild of Marcos Sr.?
The answer is no.
The Nutribun feeding program was developed from 1968 until 1970 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to combat child malnutrition in the Philippines basically to serve as the country’s staple emergency food especially during disasters.
First distributed in the early 1970’s, the Nutribun was made in local bakeries and supplied in targeted schools and feeding centers.
However, because the project was pursued during the time of the late dictator, the people and even the family itself, associated and claimed it to be Marcos’ solution to hunger.
Because of this, USAID media advisor Nancy Damman, in a 2003 memoir then clarified that it was confused so because Nutribun packs were “stamped with the slogan ‘Courtesy of Imelda Marcos –Tulungan project’.”
Photo credit: Screen grab of Senator Imee Marcos via @missimeemarcos Tiktok
