Feast and Famine

by

“TELL ME

what you eat,” French food writer JeanAnthelme Brillat-Savarin said almost two centuriesago, “and I shall tell you what you are.” In modern-day Philippines, those words still ring true, with thecontents of a dining table revealing much about thediner, including the size of his wallet. Where oneusually eats is a good indication of one’s status inlife, especially in the cities like Metro Manila, wherethe dining divide is vast and prices and restaurantprotocol discourage a commingling of paupers andprinces. Of course, from time to time, the princescross over and eat at Jollibee. Money, after all, givesone the privilege of having choices, which increasein proportion to the amount one can and is willing tospend. But it’s no guarantee of a discerning palate or good judgment, which is why restaurants withmediocre food and atrocious prices continue to exist and why well-heeled parents fill half their grocery carts with instant noodles for their kids. It’s bad enough that there are really thousands of families who cannot afford anything else but instant noodles to stave off pangs of hunger. Butscores more who should know better and can take their pick from the supermarket shelves areactually opting to fill their bellies with instant

pancit

with frightening regularity, from breakfast tomidnight snacks.Today’s fast-paced lifestyle has proved to be a great societal leveler. Convenience has becomethe key consideration in putting together a family’s daily menu, both for the moneyed and themasses, especially now that two-income families have become common, even as reliablehousehelp has become as rare as erudite senators. That’s largely why instant noodles are such ahit in this country, as are canned goods like corned beef, meat loaf (read: Spam and Maling),tuna, and sardines. One could even say these have become the new Pinoy staples, never mind if they seem more appropriate as emergency rations. They’re relatively cheap (well, excludingSpam), quick to prepare, and — admit it — quite tasty.There’s the hook: more often than not, these quick foods are loaded with sodium in a variety of forms, pleasing the Filipino palate, which is a slave to salt, among other things. Sodium serves topreserve the food in some instances and to enhance the taste in all.Enhancing may be an understatement, though. The label of a popular brand of

pancit canton

, for instance, says that each 65-gram serving (or the whole packet) has about 1,760 mg of sodium or 73 percent of the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of 2,000 mg a day. Unlike the

mami

variety, which is often shared by many members in a lower-class household, a packet of instant

canton

is consumed usually by just one person. Ravenous teeners and office workers have beenknown to consume two packets each in one sitting, sometimes at breakfast, which means theystart their day already packed with almost twice the amount of sodium their bodies should havefor the next 24 hours. But like most Pinoys who get restless if their jaws aren’t working (talking aswell as eating), they will still be plowing through snacks, lunch, more snacks, and then dinner.More salt will be present in those foods, which could be accompanied by condiments such as

patis

or soy sauce. A tablespoon of

patis

or fish sauce has 1,394 mg of sodium while anequivalent amount of soy sauce has 1,423 mg. By the time they go to bed, our

canton

-eaters will

Photo by Jojo Pasana

have a lot in common with Lot’s wife after she turned around and had a last look at Sodom andGomorrah. No wonder hypertension is among the top five causes of morbidity among Filipinos.

IT’S SAID

that the Filipinos’ love affair with salty food is the natural result of being surrounded byseawater, as well as the need to preserve food, usually fish, in preparation for lean months. Theway we are loading up on sodium these days, we may just as well be turning into daingourselves. But this may be more true among the lower classes, who, much as they would want to,are unable to buy fresh produce most of the time and so settle instead for the sodium mini-bombsmasquerading as packaged food. In comparison, many among the better-off still have lucidmoments during which they spend some of their market money on delectables that do not comeout of a can or plastic or foil packets.In bygone days, it was the poor folk who feasted on fresh foods whilethe landed gentry took pride in their hoards of preserved food.According to Gilda Cordero-Fernando, author and keen observer of Philippine culture, preserved food indicated surplus or an abundanceof goods, proof of a landlord’s wealth. This was before the advent of processed food, which actually began a U.S. solution to its problemof how to keep its soldiers fed even when they were spending daysdeep in the trenches. Preserved food for the Filipino rich then meantpork cooked

adobo

style, which was stored in clay jars, as well as anassortment of sausages and cured meats. At the same time, thelandlords had the pick of everything — from the fattest hens to thewhitest and finest sugar, to drinking water fetched from the clearestsprings. Their daily meals were the

comida

fiesta of the

kasama

, whogot the egg whites while the

amos

used the yolks for flan, had

muscovado

instead of refined sugar, and had no fancy pastries or

pastillas

for dessert, just fruit. Meat to the

kasama

was a luxury.Everyday fare consisted of rice, the catch of the day from the sea or a nearby stream or rice paddy, and vegetables.Guess who came out more fit? As Cordero-Fernando writes rather gleefully, “The peasants grewstrong and healthy from eating all that nutritious, second-class food. The landlords, on the other hand, suffered from overweight, high blood pressure, diabetes, bursitis, and gout — all theafflictions of people who have too much in life and dine too heartily and too well.” And, it must beadded, from leading a too leisurely life as well. The landlords obviously didn’t even have to breaka sweat preparing their favorite food; somebody else made sure the chickens grew plump andthen ran after them with the cleaver and plucked them clean of feathers to meet the masters’demand for

pollo afritada

. (And remember that scene in

Oro, Plata, Mata

, where the help peeledthe salted watermelon seeds one by one for the

señoritas

who thought nothing of eating these bythe handful at a time?)Today, however, neither rich nor poor

can

boast to be healthier than the other, especially withrapid urbanization and its evil twin, environmental degradation (although some may say both areas cursed), wreaking as much havoc on our lives as clueless politicians and confused policymakers, and having a profound impact on what we all eat and how often. Another version of thedining divide, though, has managed to emerge: while more Filipinos are surviving on just onemeal a day, those who are able to indulge themselves have been turning frantically to diets to getrid of the evidence of food devoured in huge quantities amassing around their middle.

IN THIS

country, of course, one can be too thin, and you will know you have reached that pointwhen people start asking you if you have lost your job or your lover, become a drug addict, or been stricken with tuberculosis. But while Filipinos like to have some meat on their bones, thesehave to be in the proper places and in the proper quantities. Otherwise, they may just wake up

Photo courtesy of The Manila Times

with a dish of

achara

(pickled vegetables) placed bytheir side and someone fanning them with a bananaleaf. Or asked if they have won a seat in Congress,which for many is the bigger insult.These days, it is the South Beach Diet that is therage among the hefty (including those merely“feeling” fat), largely because it promises the dieter weight loss without skipping any meals. This is, after all, a society where life revolves around food. Thosewho don’t chew along with the others are sure to bethe subject of whispered debates regarding thestate of their private finances or their familybackground that has, because of the dieters’abstinence, all of a sudden become dubious. (Aside from cuss words, a foreigner friend whoworked here for years mastered just one vital phrase that made him feel he was a local: “

Saantayo kakain?

— Where are we eating?”)SBD has become so popular that many restaurants now offer menus supposedly following itsspecifications. One of the more moderately priced restaurants at ritzy Greenbelt 2, for instance,offers such a menu, at a price that is about 30 percent more than the daily minimum wage. It’s avery good deal by Greenbelt standards, even though the tomato capsicum soup fills just a third of a tiny bowl, the croutons are missing from the small plate of “light caesar’s salad,” and the bakedchicken stuffed with spinach is a tad bit on the dry side. At another Greenbelt restaurant, a dish of

tokwa’t baboy

— fried tofu with pig cartilage — would cost more than half of that three-coursemeal, and chances are that unlike the salute to SBD, it wouldn’t leave you thinking you did your body good while making happy campers out of your taste buds at the same time.That is, unless you pair the

tokwa’t baboy

with a steaming bowl of congee topped with choppedscallions and squirted with

calamansi

. The congee perfectly plays up the salty-sour taste of

tokwa’t baboy

and the experience will momentarily make you forget that you will have to peddle aminor body part to pay for it afterward (if you happened to dine in Greenbelt). But then if you’re inthe first phase of the SBD, the congee would be out of the question because carbohydrates aresupposed to be a no-no (which was also why the no-crouton caesar’s comes half-naked).That’s probably the biggest drawback of SBD: carbos are banned for the first two weeks, andwhen they are allowed in again, they’re not in enough amounts to sop up any sauce on the plate.That would take much of the fun out of eating Filipino food like

kare-kare, adobo, sinigang

, and

pinakbet

, food that begs for the blandness of rice for their robust flavors to shine and satisfywithout overpowering the palate. It is also rice that makes the salty

tinapa

and

tuyo

a feast for kings, especially when the fish are drenched with the acid freshness of raw tomatoes. The latefood critic Doreen Fernandez was once even moved to write, “If we didn’t have rice, our deepestcomfort food, we would probably feel less Filipino.” Which makes it probable that many Pinoys onSBD succumb to the call of the rice pot all too soon.Rice is the one item that the starving poor struggle to retain valiantly on their table, come rain or high prices. When they say they are coping — “

nakakaraos pa kami

” — that means there is stillrice on their plates even if there is little else besides. By comparison, among the upperclass, riceis the first to go once the calories start piling up. Yet it soon makes a hurried comeback on thoseorphaned porcelain plates because for a Pinoy, rich or poor, rice is the foundation of a proper meal. Even the richest Filipino cannot survive on putanesca alone; to keep him from jumping upfrom the dining table and murdering the cook, he must be served rice on a fairly regular basis,along with his favorite

sinigang

or

nilaga

, or even

danggit

or just

bagoong

.