Trade and Industry Secretary Alfredo Pascual on Wednesday advised Filipinos to “adopt and adjust” their diets to cope with rising rice prices.

In a forum, Pascual suggested that Filipinos should try other alternatives to rice.

“Adopt and maybe adjust our diet. We are very traditional. We are so used to eating rice for breakfast, so it’s hard to shift. Others eat pandesal for breakfast regularly. But there are other alternatives like sweet potato or white corn,” he said.

Based on the DA’s price monitoring, local commercial well-milled rice is sold at P42 to P52 while regular milled rice is sold at P38 to P50.

Pascual said there were proposals to using alternatives, including a rice corn mix he pitched to the Department of Agriculture (DA) when he was the president of the University of the Philippines (UP).

“When I was UP president- I’m not saying I’m pushing it now- we made experiments on rice corn mix. Seventy percent rice, 30 percent white corn. We tested the nutrition value, the taste acceptability and it was a pass. I talked to DA at that time. They agreed to promote,” Pascual said.

“Of course, for us in UP, although we can suggest, we could not implement. So we were able to promote it to a certain extent,” he added. Jaspearl Tan/DMS