SEVERANCE:

Or, Why Others Have to Bleed More for Basic Nutritional Attainment

Think back to the last time you have had a “healthy” meal — protein shakes as substitutes for
lunch do not count — and recall where or how you were able to obtain and consume that meal.
Was it cooked by you, or by a family member, made from market-fresh ingredients and seasoned
just the way homecooked meals are supposed to be seasoned? Was it from a local cuisine restaurant,
made and served with technique despite overwhelming inflated prices bending the economic curve
to steep even lower than ever? When we define healthy eating habits and healthy meals, we often
think of two things: the nutritional intake that we get upon consuming food and the frequency of
which we consume these (assumingly) well-balanced meals in a day. To be more specific, we learn
why eating healthy food such as grains and vegetables is important to our health — they are sources
of carbohydrates and vitamins and minerals, and so on and so forth — and because we are aware
of the impact that eating has on our health, we assemble food as ingredients to make meals, which,
furthermore, we designate for consuming at different times of the day based on the effects that
each meal can yield in the aftermath of consumption. This, precisely, is the reason why most of
our breakfast meals are composed of carbohydrate-rich food — because carbohydrates fuel our
bodies up by being sources of energy that we can use to do various activities without immediately
feeling fatigued — and why our dinner meals are lesser in quantity in comparison to its counterpart
day-meals — because there is, typically, a short gap between dinner and sleeping, and sleeping
after eating does not allow your body to burn or digest what has been eaten without messing up
your circadian rhythm — and why healthy eating patterns are promoted the way they are. Our
body and, by extension, our mental and physical well-being, are intrinsically intertwined with the
food and fluids we consume; by understanding the way our bodies function and the specific health
conditions that we possess, we are able to create a well-balanced diet that can best suit what our
bodies need the most.

One point often overlooked, however, is the aspect of cultural nuance when it comes to perceiving
and consuming food. In addition to the aforementioned factors that we consider when it comes to
defining healthy eating habits, we have to also include the factor of culture and accessibility. You
will not see rice being consumed as a staple part of a meal in Scandinavian countries, similar to
how you will not see cured meat and cheese as staple parts of a meal in our country. It is easy to
see why: while rice has remained as one of our biggest agricultural crop sources, the production
of cheese and the curation of meat stagger behind significantly in the numbers, and such is also
the case for Scandinavian countries. We are, after all, an agricultural country despite pursuits of
becoming a highly industrial one. However, there is also, without a doubt, the possibility that even
if cheese and cured meat were produced and circulated abundantly, many Filipinos would be
unable to afford it, nor will it be enough to count as an appetite-fulfilling meal. This is the primary
issue that lies with accessibility and sustainability, and why certain kinds of food, despite being
readily available, are not widely circulated nor promoted as possible components of the average
Filipino meal.

Provinces in the Philippines — specifically, agricultural provinces — have continued to bear the
grunt of the failures of Philippine governance and economy, made evident by their inability to
cope with rising prices and by their lack of stability in their livelihoods, commonly consisting of
agricultural market-reliant jobs such as farming and fishery, which, undoubtedly, should at least
be average-paying jobs due to the everlasting demand for local food sources. But the reality is far
from the lavish lives that European farmer-families lead in the case of the average Filipino
agriculturalist: the average Filipino agricultural worker suffers from extreme poverty, consumes
food that is barely enough to sustain their health, and is barely protected by neither the public
workers and services that ought to uplift them due to the nature of their work nor the private entities
that endlessly profit from them. Such a case can be found in the family featured in the first part of
Kara David’s I-Witness documentary entitled Buto’t Balat, where, despite the padre de pamilya
working as a fisherman, no amount of fish caught (or the lack thereof) can feed them sufficiently
— both because of the fact that they cannot eat what ought to be sold, and because of the fact that
the fish caught barely even sells — and, combined with conflating prices and economic instability
riddled with constant inflation, no amount of “working” can ever hope to eradicate the family’s
daughter’s malnourished state, nor can it ever hope to even bring the family close to living a life
that is one strand of hair away from poverty.

Immediately, upon observing their situation and state of being, I thought to myself, “How many
more others live like this?” It was not my first time witnessing what it looks like to live a life of
extreme poverty, nor a life that dangles food in front of you and doesn’t let you eat it due to your
circumstances. However, it still did not fail to get a rise out of me — not towards the family, but
towards the injustices they faced throughout the entirety of their life and the institutions that
allowed for such injustices to happen, and to let it happen to such a large number of people and
communities. Extreme poverty is often generational, and families that are poor now will definitely
produce children who will remain poor in the future—and the cycle continues, as long as changes
to the general structure of society are hindered and downright prevented by those who want to
remain in power. Filipino society is even more poisonous to its people, if not fatal. It is no
coincidence that many of those who are seated in high and important positions in the government
happen to be the most “incompetent” and “least credible” of their roster; they rise to power because
they lead movements that unknowingly promote anti-intellectualism amongst their people. Given
that democracy should allow for people to willingly conduct their own knowledge-searching upon
deciding which public official candidate to vote, it should go without saying that the average
Filipino citizen is more likely to make an informed and consensual vote, right? Unfortunately, that
is not the case. The average Filipino citizen is likely to prioritize working or studying or engaging
with various forms of livelihood just to be able to sustain themselves and their families and time
spent on digging for information about one’s select potential candidate is time that can be spent
working or resting or catching up with friends and families after weeks and months’ worth of
hustling. Simply put, it is not complicated to see how influential and puny candidates use this
description to their advantage. By pulling strings to manipulate mass media, devising strategic
campaign methods that best cater to the preferences of the Filipino masses, and painting an image
that best depicts a person who, rather than being a champion for all, is a person who is “just like”
all.

Why do I proceed with my political tangent when the documentary barely mentions politics? The
truth is that everything is intertwined, in one way or another. Poverty is rooted in the economy just
as the economy is rooted in politics just as politics is rooted in some other system that promotes
inequity, like colonialism, in our case. I cannot discuss Filipino poverty without considering that
political entities have been some of the primary drivers of poverty in the country by their continued
negligence of the general welfare of many poor communities and by their obtained power from the
support of these same communities that they help unsustainably. I cannot write a sufficient reaction
paper towards the state of living of the families featured in the documentary when we, as a nation,
can be doing something to improve the lives of these people, rather than just “bearing witness”
and “spreading awareness” even though both actions are essential to the cause. However, any
efforts to join communities together and facilitate aid to these people are immediately squashed by
the government under the premise that all organized charity falls under the scope of communism.
Any advocacy group or union is immediately dismissed by mere association to red-tagged groups
and individuals instead of hearing what they have to say about their current situations and what
the government can best offer in order to help them. There is little that communities can do without
inevitably succumbing to the corrupt nature of authority of governance or passing the work to
public entities who will, for the lack of a better term, mess up the delivery of aid and support
towards these communities. However, this must not hinder us from uniting with one another and
being in solidarity with those who are victims of poverty and injustice. Numerous non-government
organizations (NGOs) have been cooperating with these communities and helping them attain their
basic and rightful access to their needs: literacy, skill-building, donation drives, and even taking
full advantage of the existing privileges that they have as lower-than-average income families. I,
for one, have been volunteering at a food pantry for the poor in the southernmost regions of Visayas
as an auditing manager and at a separate NGO as a module distributor and instructor to elementary
students, held remotely but assisted by on-site facilitators in the area.

Access to food — as well as the essential biomolecules needed to live a nutritious and disease-free
life — and to other components that are necessary to attain a certain quality of life should not even
be issues had we lived in a world that distributed food and other human necessities equitably and
accordingly. And yet, community nutrition and dietetics and food security are some of the sectors
of the public health industry that are overlooked due to the lack of professionals paid sufficiently
in the field and the lack of funding for studies to be conducted on the people and families’ access
to food and methods of getting this access, what types of food these are, and the likes. Those
suffering from extreme poverty are also more likely to catch bacterial and viral diseases and
conditions due to their unsanitary environment and means of hygiene, as well as their lack of intake
of the essential micro- and macronutrients needed to keep the body immune from, or, at the very
least, mitigate the effects that are caused by, these diseases. Even so, due to the way society has
evolved — from the rise of industry and capitalism, to the economic and political neglect of
extremely powerful beings, and even to the cultural drought and individualistic pursuit of life
prominent in the modern ages — we are now facing these global-scale problems and are watching
it worsen day by day the more that we value the wealth and power of the select few over the basic
rights of the majority. It may lead you to feel hopeless, seeing all of these underserved and
marginalized communities barely get by daily living and the pity excuse of a fulfilling meal that
they put on their plates every few days, but while remaining optimistic is not a direct solution, it
is a way of being that we must encourage people to manifest despite their states of being. We are
empowered by the people we love — families, friends, communities, even the slightest bit of love
we have for ourselves — and we are driven to strive and live because we find meaning in our work
and worth in every breath of exhaustion that we let out after a day’s worth of giving aid and service.
Being poor is not a noble thing to be. It should neither be glorified nor romanticized. However,
being poor means that you have seen what the world can be, and what it chooses not to be; it means
that you have been, or are, at your lowest point in life, and you have struggled to get to where you
are at this very moment. This is an experience that teaches you more about the world, how cruel it
can be, and how you must find something or someone to anchor yourself to during the darkest of
times despite your pain and frustration.