a problem that is easily solved with education. the money invested in this rice could easily instead be spent on educational campaigns to influence peoples eating habits. and i don't mean advertising but actually going door to door and talking to everyone. repeatedly, and getting everyone involved along the way. people learn to improve their hygiene to avoid spreading diseases, they can also learn to eat better.
i'd like to see evidence that teaching people failed before i believe that this is not working.
You’re assuming people have the money and availability to do this. It’s easy to say that this is easily solved with education but that’s probably a pretty entitled opinion.
Habit and tradition are hard to break. Along with that going back to my original point, it could be that a significant part of the population does not have the money or access. Lots of people have access to rice as their sole staple food when no money is available.
Edit: I am not as close to the Philippines but have lots of friends that emigrated and my understand is that there is a significant part of the population that are still living very poor. Also leaning on my life in Vietnam for comp of rural poor living in a growing country.
as others have argued, you do not need to replace the rice with equal amounts of more expensive vegetables. but you replace a small amount of rice with vegetables for the same value as you can afford it. of course it also helps if there is more support for growing the vegetables.
i am in a developing country now. what i have observed is that people here eat more than twice as much rice or other staple food in a meal than i do myself. i suspect that this is to make up for the lack of nutrients they could otherwise get from eating more vegetables.
i'd like to see evidence that teaching people failed before i believe that this is not working.