NOVEMBER 4 — Ask any Malaysian cook why a plate of nasi campur costs more than it did a few years ago, and the answer will rarely begin with the weather. It should. Every northeast monsoon, flooded fields in Johor, Perak and Kelantan push up wet market prices within weeks, and those prices travel into every kitchen in the country, from the home stove to the school canteen.

Extreme weather is no longer just a weather story. It is a food security story, and increasingly a national security one. At its centre is the food service sector: the restaurants, mamak stalls, hospitals and schools that feed Malaysians outside the home. This is where rising ingredient costs are quietly turned into smaller portions, cheaper substitutes and poorer diets.

The pattern is painfully familiar. Heavy rain floods lowland farms, and within a week the price of everyday greens such as sawi, bayam and kangkung can jump 50 to 80 per cent, sometimes passing RM8 a kilogramme. Leafy vegetables are hit first because they grow fast, rot quickly when waterlogged and are almost never stockpiled. The cycle repeats every monsoon, yet it is treated as a surprise every time.

The real concern is how fragile our supply is. Malaysia grows less than half of the vegetables it eats. Some leafy greens are self-sufficient on paper, but they are grown in flood-prone areas with no buffer stock, and when the same monsoon hits growers in Thailand and Vietnam, imports cannot fill the gap. Self-sufficiency on paper is not resilience in practice.

Food service absorbs these shocks out of sight. Operators usually aim to keep ingredient costs at about a third of the menu price. When a key ingredient triples in price, that ratio collapses. Facing price-sensitive customers, most operators swallow the loss at first, but that cannot last. Cheaper cabbage and bean sprouts replace pricier greens. The rice and fried protein stay on the plate, but the vegetables grow thinner.

Institutional kitchens are even more exposed because their budgets are fixed per head. Canteen operators under the Supplementary Food Programme (RMT) receive RM3.50 per meal in the peninsula and RM4.00 in Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan. Hospitals, boarding schools and universities run on similar fixed contracts. When prices rise mid-term, there is no menu price to adjust. The only thing that changes is what goes on the tray, and the cheapest calories are rarely the healthiest.

Low-income households face the same squeeze. When vegetables and protein become expensive, B40 families do not stop eating; they eat worse. Instant noodles, white bread, fried snacks and sugary drinks give the most calories per ringgit. They fill the stomach but leave the body short of fibre, iron, zinc and vitamins.

This is how a price spike becomes a health crisis. Malaysia already carries a double burden of malnutrition, with undernutrition and obesity side by side, often in the same household. National health surveys show that more than half of Malaysian adults are overweight or obese, while about one in five children under five is stunted, a share that has risen over the past decade. A stunted child and an overweight parent eating from the same pot of instant noodles is no contradiction. It is the predictable result of a food environment in which healthy eating has become a luxury, and whatever we save on cheap meals today will be dwarfed by the cost of treating diet-related disease tomorrow.

Because food service shapes what millions of Malaysians eat every day, it is one of the most practical policy levers we have. Three steps would make a difference.

First, institutional meal rates should follow food prices. A fixed RM3.50 cannot buy the same plate in a flood month as in a dry one. An automatic top-up when a supply emergency is declared would stop children’s nutrition from becoming the shock absorber.

Second, menus should be planned around nutrients, not just dishes. The Malaysian Healthy Plate, or suku-suku separuh, already calls for half the plate to be fruit and vegetables. Pre-approved substitution lists, swapping flood-sensitive greens for pumpkin, cabbage, carrots, legumes or frozen vegetables, would let kitchens protect that half without breaking their budgets.

Third, schools and hospitals should sign forward contracts with farmers who use rain shelters, fertigation or highland plots. Guaranteed demand gives growers a reason to invest in climate-resilient produce.

Another northeast monsoon is on its way. Malaysia cannot stop the rain, but it can decide who pays for it. Right now, that burden falls on schoolchildren, patients and low-income families. Treating food service as frontline food security infrastructure, with flexible budgets, nutrient-based menus and climate-resilient sourcing, would keep one bad harvest from becoming a generation of poor health.

* The authors are Mohd Zulfakar Mohd Nawi, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Professional Education and Postgraduates, Faculty of Technical and Vocational Education, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia , and Salme Yahya, Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Hospitality, Tourism and Wellness, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.