KUALA LUMPUR: How are you coping with rising food prices?

Fisherman Jamaludin Abdul and his family having a modest meal as his meagre income depends on his catch.

Are the advice from consumer advocates and tips from various sources workable?

The New Straits Times will be following 12 families for a month to see how Malaysians across a wide socio-economic background -- from Perlis to Sarawak -- deal with the situation.

The families include the urban poor in the Klang Valley and rural poor near Kuching, a middle-class family in Petaling Jaya and a middle-class family in Johor.

Each family has been given a sample grocery basket, designed after consultation with Mary Easaw-John, the dietetics and food services senior manager with the National Heart Institute, to ensure they meet their nutritional requirements. However, they are not compelled to follow the basket, which serves only as a guide.
Over the next four weeks, readers will learn how ordinary Malaysians can cope, without sacrificing their health, in this community service project by the NST on how the people can stretch their ringgit, thus the project name -- Ringgit and Sense.

Let us join these families' journey and learn from their experiences.

One of the 12 is a middle-class family with a household income of RM7,000 a month. They live in a two-storey home in the suburbs of Petaling Jaya.

Another lives in a two-bedroom wooden shack 75km from Kuching, with no electricity or piped water.

There are other families with just as varied backgrounds -- a driver living in Sungai Buloh who does his marketing in upper-class Taman Tun Dr Ismail, and Penang wantan mee seller Chua Siew Paik, who struggles to make ends meet as her husband is jobless.

In rural Tumpat, Azli Che Loh, an ex-soldier-turned-barber, takes home RM15 a day while his wife Hanim Junoh earns RM50 a day selling vegetables at the nearby wet market.

All families comply with a preset criteria of having only two children, aged 17 and below. One family has a third child but his food intake and other needs will be subtracted from the equation. Another family in Batu Pahat has a 21-year-old daughter.

Our reporters will follow these families when they shop for their fish, vegetables and sundries at wet markets, night markets, hypermarkets and supermarkets on a daily or weekly basis. We hope to share the lessons learned from them with NST readers.

Easaw-John and IJN senior dietitian Foong Pui Hing will analyse the food intake of these families based on their purchases, to determine if they are getting the right amount of nutrition, while Paul Selvaraj and Cheah Chee Ho, representing the Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations, will analyse and compare their spending habits.

Join them on their marketing adventures and enter their homes.