Netray Monitoring On Free Nutrition Eating Programs: Netizens Highlight Food Waste Potential

A number of students enjoy free nutritious meals at TK Kartika 1-55 Padang, West Sumatra, Wednesday (8/1/2025). (ANTARA/IGoy el Fitra/tom)

JAKARTA The Free Nutrition Food Program (MBG) has been officially implemented since January 6, 2025. MBG is the flagship program of President Prabowo Subianto and Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka.

Therefore, when Prabowo was finally elected as eighth president, the public immediately demanded promises, including free nutritious food programs for school children and pregnant women. This program aims to provide healthy food without costs to the people of Indonesia.

The MBG program continues to receive attention from the public, starting from the super large budget, implementing the program, to changing names from free lunch to free nutritious meals.

When this program finally made its debut on January 6, there were 26 provinces in Indonesia that carried out it, with a target of reaching around three and also beneficiaries. The government plans to gradually add recipients to 17 million people by the end of 2025.

However, in its implementation, the MBG program encountered many challenges. Netizens expressed their response regarding this program on social media X, which was beached by Netray during the January 3-12 period.

On X, talks about free lunch appeared in 168,831 million uploads. This conversation resulted in 1.3 million impressions in the form of likes, comments, and retweets which reached up to 247.3 million accounts.

More than 29.8 thousand discussed this topic since January 3 or three days before its implementation until January 12, 2025, "said a report byNetray.

Since three days before the implementation of the MBG program, the enthusiasm of netizens has started to appear from 1-5 thousand uploads. On the first day of distribution of MBG on January 6, the discussion increased to 21.9 thousand uploads.

The peak of the conversation over the past week occurred on January 8 which reached 40 thousand uploads, with two thousand of them using the hashtag #TempoThread. This hashtag re-sharing Tempo's upload about chaotic free nutritious eating programs, raising netizens' response to this issue.

Meanwhile, from the trend sentiment graph, it can be seen that negative sentiment dominates almost throughout the monitoring period.

"A total of 68.7 thousand netizens' uploads that talk about free nutritious meals contain negative sentiment. This number takes a portion of 40 percent of the total conversation," wrote Netray.

However, that does not mean that there is absolutely no positive response from netizens regarding this MBG program. It can be said that the pros and cons of implementing the free nutritious eating program have their respective spaces.

A number of topics discussed in the discussion about the free nutritious eating program include food menus such as nutritional content, portion, taste, and program budget which then dragged the discussion about education issues and family welfare. In other words, the debate over whether this program is in accordance with the objectives or targets is still rolling.

The discussion of free lunches with negative sentiment was largely a comment on the food menu that did not match expectations. Some netizens even call it a "sadfood" because it is considered unattractive and even concerning food for children.

For example, there are no vegetables in the free nutritious food provided. Therefore, many are pessimistic about the government's goal of producing a golden generation through this program.

In addition, netizens also highlight the potential food waste or wasted food caused by this program because there are a number of children who tend to choose foods that are according to their taste or habit, or because they are allergic to certain foods.

In fact, Indonesia itself is one of the largest food waste producers in the world. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in the Food Waste Index Report 2024 reported that Indonesia produces around 14.73 million tons of household food waste per year, making it the largest food waste producer in Southeast Asia.

Although it aims to improve children's nutrition, the MBG program is considered to have the potential to increase the amount of food waste if it is not managed properly. Therefore, netizens advise the government to be more serious in managing this program, including involving a number of experts and doing research carefully.

Warganet considers that a free nutritious eating program aimed at preventing stunting is also a wrong approach. Because stunting is a complex problem that requires more comprehensive intervention, intervention should be focused from the start or in the first thousand days of life.

According to netizens, it would be better if the government focused more on stabilizing food prices so that people who were unable to afford it could still meet the nutritional needs of children from home.

In addition to the approach to goals that are considered inappropriate, the distribution of this program is also considered not on target, so it has the potential to waste the budget. This is because there are a number of elite schools that are reportedly receiving the MBG program, even though they are considered capable of meeting the nutritional needs of the house. According to netizens, this program should be given to those who cannot afford it so that the benefits are more pronounced.

Despite being bombarded with thousands of negative sentiments that are pessimistic about the sustainability of the MBG program, Netray still finds a significant number of positive responses, which is 26 percent of the total conversation.

Among those who responded positively was by appreciating the government, especially President Prabowo Subianto who kept his campaign promises. Even though it is not perfect according to public expectations, netizens are still grateful and hope that this program will really provide benefits.

A number of public figures, such as Fahri Hamzah to Muhaimin Iskandar, also actively appreciate the Free Nutrition Food program. Although most of the positive responses are dominated by program campaigns and tend to be uniform, the number is significant enough to suppress negative sentiment which reaches 40 percent.