By Maribel B. Evasco
[Informative Essay]
Filipinos eat too much, not counting those who hardly eat at all and those who eat a great deal more than they should. Usually it is the wrong food in the right amounts, at other times it is the other way around and about.
One hearts of countries borrowing customs, laws, or traditions from another country. The Philippines borrowed its eating habits from three nations. The Spaniards cultivated the national taste for the rich and highly spiced foods which today still form the major part of our diet. Americans taught us to eat hot dogs, steaks, candies, and a few added fillings. The Chinese influence was even more marked. And the Japanese made us hunger for all three kinds. The Japanese can thank their starts that Filipinos have not asked them to pay food reparations for all the meals they missed during the occupation. On second thought I better not mention this at all.
[Informative Essay]
Filipinos eat too much, not counting those who hardly eat at all and those who eat a great deal more than they should. Usually it is the wrong food in the right amounts, at other times it is the other way around and about.
One hearts of countries borrowing customs, laws, or traditions from another country. The Philippines borrowed its eating habits from three nations. The Spaniards cultivated the national taste for the rich and highly spiced foods which today still form the major part of our diet. Americans taught us to eat hot dogs, steaks, candies, and a few added fillings. The Chinese influence was even more marked. And the Japanese made us hunger for all three kinds. The Japanese can thank their starts that Filipinos have not asked them to pay food reparations for all the meals they missed during the occupation. On second thought I better not mention this at all.
Any other person but a Filipino would have been content to choose, say a dish there, a dish here, and then consigned the rest of the extraneous material. It seems that in the case of Filipinos, we elected to retain not only the white meat but also the neck; we saved every piece of the fowl, lock, stock, and pinfeathers. The result of course is a pleasant but ill-defined mess.
Foreigners who have lived in the Philippines think the reason for the many sets of abused intestines in this country is the frequency with which food is taken. We have, besides the customary breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that marvelous Castillan innovation known as the merienda.
This pleasant afterthought may include nothing more fortifying than a humble plateful of fried bananas, some brown sugar, and a glass of water. Then again it may consist of thick chocolate, succulent suman garnished with freshly grated coconut, bibingka, delicate cakes from the bakery, newly baked bread or rolls, a glass of rich milk or imported coffee, arrozcaldo, tasty ginatan with five or ten different kinds of tubers and fruits wedded together into a postpourri of such ambrosial exquisiteness as to make one’s mouth water. The merienda was conceived with the idea of taking away the edge of evening hunger with a view to providing a favorable climate for the heaviest meal of the day – dinner.
It is gaining greater currency in the nation, what with such diurnal innovations as Filipino Next and the minimum wage law. It is the mid-morning snack which has been called in the land of its birth by the unassuming title of “brunch”, a bastardization, no doubt, of breakfast and lunch, combining the worst qualities of both and forsaking everything else. Brunch is, as the reader might have suspected, really not a bourgeoisie affliction, having been confined at the start to a few whose incomes permitted them the luxury of an erratic dietary existence. This is precisely the reason why the middle-class Filipino has cottoned to the practice with fanatical zeal. Imprisoned by his incongruous Oriental Babbitry, he must sample brunch no matter what the cost to his health.
Filipinos eat too much. Many more eat too little, which is perhaps a blessing in disguise. Ponder in your mind the chaos that could sweep the country if every man, woman, and child had the means to purchase all the food they wanted. Filipinos would quickly eat their way into extinction.
Maybe it is just as well that an inequity exists in the distribution of our national food supply. Hunger, to repeat an old and tested aphorism, is the primal force behind mankind’s struggle for existence. Take it away and what would you have left?
Foreigners who have lived in the Philippines think the reason for the many sets of abused intestines in this country is the frequency with which food is taken. We have, besides the customary breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that marvelous Castillan innovation known as the merienda.
This pleasant afterthought may include nothing more fortifying than a humble plateful of fried bananas, some brown sugar, and a glass of water. Then again it may consist of thick chocolate, succulent suman garnished with freshly grated coconut, bibingka, delicate cakes from the bakery, newly baked bread or rolls, a glass of rich milk or imported coffee, arrozcaldo, tasty ginatan with five or ten different kinds of tubers and fruits wedded together into a postpourri of such ambrosial exquisiteness as to make one’s mouth water. The merienda was conceived with the idea of taking away the edge of evening hunger with a view to providing a favorable climate for the heaviest meal of the day – dinner.
It is gaining greater currency in the nation, what with such diurnal innovations as Filipino Next and the minimum wage law. It is the mid-morning snack which has been called in the land of its birth by the unassuming title of “brunch”, a bastardization, no doubt, of breakfast and lunch, combining the worst qualities of both and forsaking everything else. Brunch is, as the reader might have suspected, really not a bourgeoisie affliction, having been confined at the start to a few whose incomes permitted them the luxury of an erratic dietary existence. This is precisely the reason why the middle-class Filipino has cottoned to the practice with fanatical zeal. Imprisoned by his incongruous Oriental Babbitry, he must sample brunch no matter what the cost to his health.
Filipinos eat too much. Many more eat too little, which is perhaps a blessing in disguise. Ponder in your mind the chaos that could sweep the country if every man, woman, and child had the means to purchase all the food they wanted. Filipinos would quickly eat their way into extinction.
Maybe it is just as well that an inequity exists in the distribution of our national food supply. Hunger, to repeat an old and tested aphorism, is the primal force behind mankind’s struggle for existence. Take it away and what would you have left?
