The Republic of the Philippines consists of 7,107 islands located in Southeast Asia. Its long, broken coastline is surrounded by three major bodies of water—the Pacific Ocean on the east, the South China Sea on the north and west, and the Celebes Sea on the south. The country is divided into three major island groups—Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao— with 17 regions, 81 provinces, and 136 cities. It has 120 ethnic groups and over 180 languages and dialects. Filipino, the national language, and English are the official languages. The Philippines is the 12th most populous country in the world, with over 90 million people. Over 80 percent of the population is Roman Catholic, followed by Muslims (5%), who live mainly on the island of Mindanao. Manila, situated on the island of Luzon, is the nation’s capital.
Geography has largely shaped what Filipinos eat. The country’s closeness to water sources, its forests and fields, and a tropical climate marked by dry and rainy seasons account for the Filipinos’ dependence on rice, fish, and vegetables as diet staples. Other cultures—from the 300-plus years of Spanish rule that started in the 16th century, the presence of Chinese traders and immigrants dating back to the precolonial and Spanish colonial periods, and the 20th-century American occupation—have had a lasting impact on the country’s foodways. Filipinos have adapted (“Filipinized”) these cultures’ dishes to native tastes and the use of local ingredients. In addition, regional differences have resulted in food variations as well as the emergence of trademark dishes.
Food Culture Snapshot
Ramon and Malou Fernandez live with their two children and a housemaid in a housing development in metropolitan Manila. Ramon is a purchasing manager for a multinational company, and Malou is an administrative assistant to the vice president of a big Filipino corporation. They are a typical two-income middle class Filipino family who can afford the luxury of a fulltime housemaid. Malou starts every weekend by going to a nearby wet market early Saturday morning with her maid’s help. At the market, she buys fresh meats such as chicken, beef sirloin, brisket, and pork loin, as well as shrimp and fish like tilapia, grouper, sole, and milkfish. She also purchases fruits like bananas, apples, pears, papayas, and oranges.
Most Saturday afternoons, the whole family goes to the big supermarket in an upscale mall for grocery shopping. Here, Malou buys pantry staples including corn and olive oils, soy sauce, vinegar, fish sauce, and spices. She also gets rice, pasta, canned fish (tuna and sardines), canned meats (corned beef, Spam, chorizos—spicy sausages), sliced white bread, cereals, low-fat milk, and fruit juices in cartons. In the fresh vegetables section, she often gets potatoes, onions, garlic, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, cauliflower, and swamp cabbage. Occasionally, she also purchases packaged fresh Vigan longanisas (specialty sausages from Ilocos Sur, a province north of Manila) and tocino (sweet cured pork), which are both popular breakfast foods. She replenishes her stash of snack foods by buying cookies, potato chips, crackers, and ice cream.
Malou writes down a weekly menu for the housemaid, indicating what to serve for breakfast and dinner every weekday (the couple has lunch at work and the kids eat at school). The family starts their day early, having a quick breakfast around 6:30 A.M., usually consisting of rice, corned beef or sardines, and fried or scrambled eggs. On occasion, they would have cereal with milk and sliced fruit. Dinner is a more leisurely affair. They convene at around 7 P.M. and dine on typical fare like rice, barbecue chicken or grilled fish, fresh green salad, and/or sautéed vegetables like mung beans or shredded cabbage. Dessert is usually fruit such as sliced mangoes, watermelon, or bananas.
Their meals during weekends are more special or elaborate. The family goes out for lunch on Saturdays, usually for Chinese, Italian, or Japanese food. Malou usually cooks dinner Saturday nights, making her husband’s and kids’ favorite dishes like pasta with pesto, tempura, sukiyaki, and Caesar salad. Sundays are usually spent having lunch with the in-laws.
Many Filipino families still eat home-cooked meals, although some of the meals may come from or include packaged sources, on which there is a heavy reliance (flavoring packets, instant noodles, canned soups). Filipino families, particularly in the urban areas, now also rely heavily on supermarkets for many of their meals, eschewing the wet markets that used to be the primary source for fresh meats, fish, and produce.
Although the Fernandez family orders the occasional pizza from Domino’s for an afternoon snack, Filipinos in general have not totally embraced the concept of take-out food. They prefer to eat out and, for the middle and upper classes, experiment with other cuisines, as evidenced by the burgeoning growth of ethnic restaurants in many cities around the country. Overall, restaurants serving Filipino food and cheap fast food are still very popular go-to places especially for the middle and lower classes.
The Philippines is an agricultural country. Its lands are most conducive to rice growing because of excess rainfall brought about by the monsoon season as well as the year-round warm climate. Rice is the primary staple food of Filipinos, who eat it for lunch and dinner and, frequently, for breakfast. It serves as a base for other foods or viands they eat—from foods as basic as dried fish and vegetables to richer meat and seafood dishes. Steamed rice with its inherent blandness is an excellent foil for the salty, sour, spicy, and bitter foods that Filipinos eat.
Rice is also made into dessert or snack cakes, such as suman (a rice cake made from glutinous rice and coconut milk), puto (a steamed rice cake), and sapinsapin (a layered multicolored rice cake made with coconut milk). Popular afternoon snacks include rice-based savory dishes like arroz caldo, which is rice gruel with chicken and ginger, and the stir-fried rice noodle dish called pancit bihon.
Fish and other seafood figure prominently in the Filipino diet. The surrounding ocean and seas, and the country’s numerous rivers, lakes, and interior waterways, spawn a wide variety and abundance of seafood. One of the more popular varieties of fish is bangus, or milkfish, the national fi sh, which can be stuffed with onions and tomatoes and grilled, or be salted and dried and then fried. The latter is often eaten for breakfast with garlic rice. Other widely consumed fish varieties are tilapia, swordfish, blue marlin, grouper, catfish, and tuna. Shrimp, prawns, squid, mussels, oysters, and clams are also abundant.
Dried fish, called tuyo, which could be any salted and dried small fish, is common fare for the country’s poor. Fish sauce, or patis, made from salted or fermented tiny fish or shrimp, is typically used in Filipino cooking to flavor food or as a dipping sauce. A fermented fish or shrimp paste, bagoong, is often paired with certain foods like kare-kare (oxtail stew) and used as an ingredient in many dishes.
The coconut is another important land-based crop in the Philippines. Its meat in varying stages of maturity is used for different purposes. The juice of the young coconut, or buko, makes a refreshing drink, and its white tender meat can be eaten fresh or used for making sweets, salads, or savory dishes. The mature coconut’s (niyog) meat is used in sweets and can be grated to make coconut milk. Filipinos also consume coconut-based liquor called tuba and lambanog as well as coconut vinegar, which is used in cooking and in dipping sauces.
The fertile lands yield a bountiful variety of vegetables. Most vegetables are either steamed, cooked in soups, or sautéed with other vegetables. There are root crops like cassava ( kamoteng kahoy ), purple yam (ube), sweet potato (camote), taro (gabi), and yam bean (singkamas). Other commonly eaten vegetables include swamp cabbage (kangkong—water convolvulus, sometimes called water spinach), mustard greens (mustasa), banana hearts (pusong saging —actually the blossom of the banana plant), eggplants, and mung beans (munggo), as well as gourds like bottle gourds (upo), sponge gourds, and bitter melons (ampalaya).
Garlic is an indispensable flavoring ingredient in everyday Filipino cooking. Tomatoes were introduced to the country by way of the Spanish galleons that plied the route between Manila and Acapulco during the mid-16th to 18th centuries. They are widely used in salads, dipping sauces, and many Spanish-influenced Filipino stews and, when sautéed with garlic and onions, make up the principal fl avor base of Filipino cuisine.
Chicken, pork, and beef are the meat staples in the Filipino diet (with the exception of the Muslims on Mindanao, who do not eat pork). Chinese traders are believed to have introduced pork in the pre-colonial period, which accounts for the Chinese names of many cuts like liempo (pork belly) and kasim (lean pork). Filipinos use almost every part of the pig in cooking, including its blood and intestines. Beef is said to have been introduced during the Spaniard colonial period, with popular cuts named in Spanish like solomillo (tenderloin) and punta y pecho (brisket). Many Spanish-influenced dishes use beef as a main ingredient.
Pancit (also spelled pansit), or noodles, is a mainstay ingredient that has undergone significant adaptations in the preparation process. Filipinos use different types of noodles, such as those made from rice, egg, wheat, and mung beans, to make various pancit dishes. Introduced by the Chinese during the Spanish period, the dish has been Filipinized, and various regions have come up with their own versions as well. These include pancit Malabon from the coastal town of Malabon, which is noodles topped with shrimp, oysters, and squid, and pancit habhab from the town of Lukban in Quezon Province, which is brown wheat noodles prepared with chayote and pork and eaten without utensils from a banana leaf that serves as the plate.
Filipinos use an assortment of herbs and spices in everyday cooking such as ginger, galangal, lemongrass, coriander, turmeric, bay leaves, screw pine (pandan), and black pepper. Different varieties of chili peppers are also common, but the spiciest ones, like the small, very hot pepper called siling labuyo, are mainstay ingredients of the Bicol and Lanao regions, where foods tend to be on the very spicy side. Annatto, or atsuete, introduced by Mexicans by way of the Spanish galleon trade, is typically used as a food coloring. Tamarind and kamias (bilimbi) are used as souring agents, mostly in soups, but they are also made into sweets.
The locally grown calamansi or calamondin, a small, tart, green citrus fruit, is a very popular ingredient. It is made into juice, is used to accent foods, and is squeezed into dipping sauces (sawsawan) containing soy or fish sauce to complement roasted or grilled meats, seafood, and noodles. Fruits, just like vegetables, are plentiful in the Philippines. Many of the popular tropical fruits enjoyed by Filipinos such as guavas, pineapples, papayas, avocados, and sugar apples were brought over from Mexico via the Spanish galleon trade. The yellow Philippine mango, mangga, is the favorite and most famous fruit, known for its signature succulent sweetness. It is typically eaten fresh and frequently made into desserts. These mangoes are also dried, mostly for export. The province of Davao on the island of Mindanao is the country’s fruit capital—it has many plantations growing pineapples, bananas, pomelos, and mangosteens for export.
Water is always served with meals. Juices from fruits like the calamansi, pomelo, watermelon, and dalandan (a type of green citrus) are widely drunk. Soda drinks are heavily consumed everywhere in the country. Coffee is grown in the Batangas region on the island of Luzon as well as in certain areas in Mindanao. Filipinos typically drink instant coffee and, increasingly, with the advent of popular chains such as Starbucks and local ones like Figaro, freshly brewed coffee in the metropolitan areas.
Cooking
In the Filipino household, it is usually the head female— in most instances the wife and mother—who shops for and prepares the meals. More affluent households have househelp who do the food preparation, which may include the shopping and, in most cases, the cooking. The most affluent households employ cooks whose sole job is to run the kitchen and prepare the family meals.
It used to be that Filipino kitchens were small and basic, with food cooked in earthenware pots on clay burners (kalan) over coal or wood fi res. But the American occupation in the early 20th century changed all that as Americans introduced technology for cooking and food preservation and Western style kitchens to Filipinos. Now, many households have gas or electric stoves and burners, refrigerators, microwaves, rice cookers, and other modern conveniences. Cookware such as aluminum and nonstick pots and pans is commonly used. During big feasts or fiestas, however, some of the old cooking implements resurface, such as clay pots (palayok) and big metal vats (kawa), typically used for cooking food for large numbers of people.
Many middle- and upper-class homes, particularly in the urban areas, have “dirty kitchens,” second kitchens where the dirty work involved in food preparation is done. This can include activities like cleaning chicken and fish, chopping vegetables, and peeling shrimp. Some dirty kitchens are still equipped with traditional native cooking implements such as the kawali, a multipurpose woklike cast iron pan, or the mortar and pestle used to pound garlic and spices. The main kitchen houses the modern appliances and is where much of the actual cooking is done.
The most common cooking methods are boiling, grilling, stewing, steaming, and frying—all but frying are indigenous and were used prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. Many of the most popular Filipino dishes are boiled, or nilaga, including bulalo, a soup made from boiling and simmering beef kneecaps and vegetables that is coveted for its marrow. Grilling, particularly on coals, is widely used for meats and fish.
Stewing is a favored cooking method for chicken and other meats. The country’s national dish, adobo, is a stew of fowl, pork, or vegetables (or a combination) typically prepared with garlic, vinegar, and soy sauce. From Spain come tomato-based stews, such as callos (tripe with chickpeas) and apritada (chicken or pork simmered in tomatoes). Frying and sautéing in oil are not indigenous cooking methods but are commonly used techniques. Filipinos adapted sautéing, or guisa (guisa derives from the Spanish word guisar, meaning “to sauté”), from the Spanish; it involves sautéing garlic, tomatoes, and onions together.
Many Filipinos, especially those who live close to the water, often make fresh fish and seafood (or meats) into kinilaw. This involves putting the raw seafood or meat in vinegar, at times with other ingredients like lime juice and onions. The acidity of the vinegar (as well as the lime, if used) “cooks” the food, even if no heat is involved in the process. Kinilaw is popular as pulutan, which are fi nger foods typically consumed with alcoholic drinks. Salting is another common method used for fish, a way to preserve an abundant catch for later consumption.
Salted fish—tuyo for small fish and daing for bigger fish—is a breakfast mainstay in the Filipino diet. Meat, fish, and vegetable dishes, as well as fruits, that are cooked in rich coconut milk or cream are called ginataan, a cooking method particularly popular in the Bicol region in the southern part of the country.
Typical Meals
Most Filipinos eat five times a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus two snacks in between—one in mid-morning and one in mid-afternoon, called merienda. The food courses in a Filipino meal are served almost all at once on the table, including the soup course if one has been prepared. Typically, the soup is not just eaten on its own but also enjoyed with the food—the diner often ladles some soup broth onto the rice to flavor and moisten it. Communal platters or bowls containing rice and viands (one or two or several) are placed at the center of the table; small sauce plates containing sawsawan, or dipping sauces, are placed on the table as well.
The typical implements in a Filipino meal are a fork and spoon. The spoon is used primarily to scoop the rice and other foods from the plate. In many rural areas, people still eat the traditional kamayan way—using their hands. Filipinos from all classes who attend fiestas or feast days in the provinces also get an opportunity to eat celebration food kamayan style.
Steamed white rice is the basis of every major Filipino meal. A main dish consisting of fish, chicken, or some other form of protein is always served with the rice. A vegetable dish usually rounds out the meal. Soup is served on occasion and can also stand in for the main viand if it contains seafood, chicken, or meats. The Filipino table is not complete without a small dish or two containing sawsawan, or dipping sauce. The sauce helps tailor the dish to the diner’s individual taste. Grilled fish is often served with a sauce of patis (fish sauce) and a squeeze of the local lime calamansi, while deep-fried pork knuckles are often accompanied by a sauce of soy sauce, vinegar, and crushed garlic. Desserts are not elaborate in an everyday Filipino meal. It can be as simple as a piece or slice of fruit or a serving of ice cream.
Economic status and regional differences and preferences are factors that influence variations in the typical Filipino meal. Poor Filipinos typically subsist on rice and salted, dried, or canned fish and, for the very poor, rice mixed with fermented fish or shrimp paste. Affluent Filipinos may eat rice with two or three kinds of meat on the table.
The regional variations in the typical Filipino meal were primarily shaped by the regions’ natural resources—the people used ingredients they were able to readily source from their surroundings—as well as their collective taste preferences. In the Ilocos region north of Manila, known for its harsh climate and limited arable lands, the natives eat a diet heavy in rice, vegetables, and bagoong (fermented fish or shrimp paste), which they use to flavor vegetables and as a dipping sauce. The hardy and thrifty Ilokanos, as the people are called, also have a preference for bitter foods, including ampalaya (bitter melon) and for dishes called pinapaitan, where bitter bile from a goat or cow is added to a dish as a flavoring ingredient.
There are many regional versions of the national dish adobo—an everyday dish usually of chicken or pork (or both) stewed in vinegar, garlic, peppercorns, bay leaves, and, often, soy sauce. Manila has the version with soy sauce and vinegar, Cavite in the south puts mashed pork liver in it to thicken the sauce, and Zamboanga adds coconut cream. Other ingredients such as vegetables, seafood, and various fowl (such as duck or snipe) can also be prepared into adobo.
Serves 4
Ingredients
8 chicken thighs
Cloves from a head of garlic, crushed and peeled
2 bay leaves
1 tsp whole black peppercorns, lightly crushed
1 c palm or cane vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)
½ c soy sauce
1 c water
1. In a large pot, combine the chicken, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns, vinegar, soy sauce, and water, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for about 25 minutes. Discard bay leaves.
2. Remove the chicken pieces, and broil them in a pan on each side until golden brown, about 10 minutes total (alternatively, you can fry the chicken in a skillet in 2 tablespoons olive oil). Transfer chicken to a platter, and set aside.
3. Meanwhile, boil the sauce until about 1½ cups remain, about 15–20 minutes. Pour the sauce over the broiled chicken. Serve with steamed white rice.
A typical Filipino breakfast consists of sinangag (garlic fried rice), fried eggs, and any of the following: fried tapa (dried salted sliced beef), fried longanisa (native sausage), sautéed (canned) corned beef, and fried salted dried fish. A dipping sauce of vinegar with salt, crushed garlic, or chilies is typically served with the fried beef, sausage, or fish. At times, Filipinos skip rice and eat the traditional breakfast bread called pan de sal (meaning “bread of salt”), which are small, oval-shaped buns that pair well with eggs and popular fillings like kesong puti (white fresh carabao-milk cheese), peanut butter, corned beef, and ham. Instant or brewed coffee is often consumed at breakfast.
Lunch usually consists of rice and a dish such as fried or grilled fish like tilapia or pompano, or local dishes like bistek (fried sliced beef marinated in soy sauce and calamansi) or binagoongang baboy (pork with shrimp or fish paste). Popular vegetable dishes are munggo guisado (sautéed mung beans with diced pork and bitter melon), pinakbet (a popular dish from the Ilocos region, made of sliced eggplant, okra, squash, and other vegetables flavored with fermented fish or shrimp paste), or laing (taro leaves in coconut milk, a specialty of the Bicol region, which is known for its spicy dishes).
A typical dinner features dishes similar to lunch, with rice and perhaps a vegetable side dish. It may also include soup, and among the more typical ones are the classic Filipino soup sinigang (fish, meat, or shrimp in broth made with a souring ingredient like tamarind), tinolang manok (boiled chicken with ginger), or suam na tulya (corn and clam soup from the province of Pampanga, a region acclaimed for its culinary excellence).
Popular merienda (mid-afternoon snacks) include noodle dishes like sotanghon (stir-fried mung bean noodles with chicken and vegetables) and pancit molo (soup with stuffed pork and shrimp dumplings that originated from the town of Molo in Iloilo Province). Other favorite merienda foods include dinuguan (stew made with pork blood), which is often served with steamed rice cakes, and tokwa’t baboy (fried tofu cubes and boiled pork in a sauce of vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic). Filipino food is characterized by four dominant flavors: salty, sour, sweet, and bitter. All these flavors complement rice. There are many food pairings in Filipino cuisine that allow combinations of contrasting flavors to meld pleasingly on the native palate, such as sour green mangoes dipped in salty fermented fish or shrimp paste.
Eating Out
During the Spanish colonial period, ambulant vendors walked the streets selling foods to natives, sometimes setting up makeshift tables from where they would sell their food to lure passersby. These vendors, called chow-chow (from stir-frying or “chow”) vendors and known for their noodle dishes, were Chinese and are credited for introducing street-food culture in the country.
In the early 19th century, Chinese immigrants began setting up places for public eating, located mostly in Manila, where the Spaniards allowed them to live in a designated area. These places, called panciterias (from pancit, or noodles), served Chinese foods with Spanish names on their menus like morisqueta tostada (fried rice), camaron rebozado (shrimp croquettes), and torta de cangrejo (crab omelet). The Spanish nomenclature benefited the patrons, many of whom were from the Spanish speaking class. To this day, some restaurants in Manila’s Chinatown and other parts of the country still list dishes with Spanish names on their menus.
Cooking and entertaining at home were the norm until a restaurant culture emerged around the 1950s, post American rule. During this period, restaurants offering American food, Spanish food, Continental cuisine from countries like France and Germany, and Asian food sprouted in urban areas, particularly in Manila. Filipinos were finally opening up their palates to other cuisines. But at that time, only a few restaurants offered Filipino food, including two that are still around today, the Aristocrat (founded in 1936) and Barrio Fiesta (founded in 1958).
In the 1960s, more restaurants in the cities started serving Filipino food—the kind typically cooked only at home, such as adobo and caldereta (beef stew). With urbanization and industrialization came the need for more restaurants as people became busier and had less time to cook at home. Tourism was starting to climb, too, and an opportunity arose in the form of Filipino restaurants that would cater primarily to tourists. Urbanites also started hankering for the foods they ate growing up. It became very trendy to open all-Filipino food restaurants—from gourmet-type places, to those off ering only regional specialties, to those serving only one type of food (such as bangus, or milkfish, restaurants). This became more than just a passing trend, as Filipino restaurants are still very much around today.
Chinese cuisine has remained very popular in the country, and Spanish restaurants serving upscale dishes that Filipinos still associate with special celebrations have stayed around. But globalization has also had a very strong impact on the thriving local restaurant scene. Many urban restaurants off er the world’s most prominent cuisines, including Japanese, Indian, Italian, and French. Local and foreign chefs alike are offering fusion-style food marrying Filipino ingredients or traditional dishes with Asian or European ingredients, particularly in the country’s major cities.
The United States has made its culinary mark on the country most significantly in the area of fast foods. American fast-food and drink companies such as McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Coca-Cola are ubiquitous in many cities and towns all over the country. McDonald’s is a big favorite, luring the Filipino palate with their offerings of local dishes such as the McSpaghetti, spaghetti topped with sweet Filipino-style tomato sauce, and dishes like their longanisa breakfast value meal composed of fried garlic rice, fried egg, and fried native sausage. Many Filipino rivals to this food giant, most notably the highly successful and very popular local chain Jollibee, are giving McDonald’s and its ilk stiff competition with their Filipino-influenced burgers and other fast-food dishes.
The Filipino masses also patronize fare served in carinderias, or open-air food stalls—places where people sit communally to eat home-style food. Then there are the turo-turo (“point-point”) establishments, downscale places where one can order from a buffet-style arrangement by pointing to the food one wants to consume. Most of these eateries are found close to offices, public markets, and transportation hubs, catering mostly to low-income workers and families in search of quick, cheap, but satisfying meals.
Ambulant vendors are still very much part of the street landscape today. Popular offerings consist of balut (a local boiled delicacy of fertilized duck’s egg), taho (soybean curd topped with sugar syrup), and fish balls on sticks dipped in sweet or spicy sauce. There are vendors with stationary stalls offering snack fare such as banana-cue and camote-cue —syrup-coated plantain bananas and sweet potatoes on sticks—and barbecued pork and chicken parts, including entrails. Some of these parts were baptized by Filipinos with descriptive colloquial names such as “Adidas” for chicken feet and “Walkman” for pig’s ears. Other popular street foods include fried ukoy (fritters made from rice dough or flour topped with small unshelled shrimp) and halo-halo (cut-up fruit, beans, and tubers in crushed ice with milk).
Special Occasions
The introduction of Catholicism during the Spanish colonial period paved the way for the annual celebration of feasts, or fiestas, honoring various towns’ patron saints, a ritual that became deeply ingrained in Filipino community life; to this day these are celebrated with much anticipation, fanfare, and local color. Now more than just a saint’s feast day, the celebration can also be a thanksgiving for a successful harvest as well as for God’s benevolence.
Today’s fiestas are a mixture of the religious and the secular—the parish church organizes mass, processions for the honored saint, and prayer sessions, while the townfolk in turn organize events like beauty contests, sporting matches, dances, and other activities intended to bring not just communal enjoyment but also extra funding to the town’s coffers. All these activities set the stage for private gatherings that bring friends, families, and even strangers back to towns people’s homes to share the typically extravagant fiesta meal.
The fiestas in the Spanish colonial period were led by the Spanish friar, the head of the church, so the foods that became widely associated with the town celebration tended to showcase Spanish cuisine, as is still the case today. The fare includes the quintessential fiesta food and table centerpiece, the lechon, a whole roasted pig, often stuffed with aromatic leaves like lemongrass or tamarind. Spanish influenced dishes such as paella (rice with meats and/or seafood), galantina (stuffed deboned chicken), and morcon (stuffed beef roll) remain fiesta mainstays.
Some Filipino fare is served as well, such as kare-kare (oxtail stew) and various kinds of steamed or grilled local fish and seafood. The popular Chinese-influenced pancit (noodles with meats or seafood and vegetables), typically in one of its more sumptuous regional variations, is usually offered. There are also Spanish-style desserts such as leche flan (steamed or baked egg custard) and brazo de mercedes (meringue roll filled with custard), as well as American-style cakes and native sweets.
Among the popular fiestas in the Philippines is the Pahiyas, a highly colorful town celebration held in Lukban, in Quezon Province, every May 15 to honor their patron saint San Isidro de Labrador. Here, home owners decorate the facades of their houses with colorful and edible rice wafers, together with various fruits and vegetables. The wafers are usually fried and eaten after the celebration. In the town of Balayan in Batangas, the Parada ng Lechon, or Parade of Roasted Pigs, is held in honor of the patron saint St. John the Baptist. The pigs are dressed according to the sponsoring team’s theme, blessed by the priest in church, and then consumed by the townspeople afterward.
Another highly anticipated event for Filipinos is the Christmas season. Like the fiesta, it has become more than just a religious celebration. One of the highlights of the season is the family meal served during Noche Buena (meaning “night of goodness,” that is, Christmas Eve), a meal eaten after attending the midnight mass celebrated in honor of the birth of Jesus Christ. Filipinos celebrate with their families by eating foods like Chinese ham, queso de bola (Edam cheese), roast turkey or chicken, fruit salad, and the requisite Spanish-influenced foods like cocido (boiled meats and vegetables with broth), chicken pastel (chicken topped with a savory crust), ensaimada (a brioche-like bun topped with butter and cheese), and hot chocolate (also introduced during the Spanish period). Grapes, apples, and roasted chestnuts are often served.
The season also includes the traditional Misa de Gallo (Rooster’s Mass), a 4 a.m. dawn mass held for nine consecutive mornings leading up to Christmas Day. Here, native delicacies—freshly made bibingka (a steamed rice pancake topped with butter, cheese, and grated coconut) and puto bumbong (a steamed cylindrical sticky purple rice cake served with butter, sugar, and grated coconut)—are served from stalls outside churches to churchgoers after the dawn mass. Hot ginger tea, or salabat, the typical drink accompaniment, helps ward off the early morning chill.
Diet and Health
The basic Filipino diet conforms to the tenets of what is universally recognized as healthy eating—rice and tubers are high in carbohydrates, fish is an excellent source of protein and omega-3 oils, and vegetables provide necessary vitamins and minerals. While these food groups remain the basis of the Filipino diet, there have been significant changes in dietary patterns over the years, resulting in obesity and increased incidences of serious diseases. Filipinos are now eating copious amounts of processed foods (including meats, instant noodles, chips, and baked goods) and drinking more soda.
Prices of some processed foods have become even more affordable to the average Filipino than prices of fruits and vegetables. The consumption of fruits and vegetables including roots and tubers has decreased, while consumption of animal-based foods, as well as foods high in sugar, fats, and oils, has increased. Instant noodles are overwhelmingly popular, a major source of empty calories. Many Filipinos are increasingly dependent on street food not just for snacking but for their major meals as well. Most street foods are full of calories, fat, and cholesterol but are highly patronized because of their accessibility, low cost, and ability to fill one up. Restaurant fast foods are now a fixture in the everyday Filipino diet. The incidence of coronary diseases has vastly increased and is associated with the changes in dietary trends in the country. Heart disease is now among the leading causes of adult mortality in the country, alongside tuberculosis, pneumonia, and cancer. Adult obesity continues to rise.
Widespread and fast-growing urbanization, globalization (as evident in the rise of food imports and preference for fast foods), and easier access to technology (cell phones, computers, videos) have all contributed to the significant changes in the Filipino’s food-consumption habits. The increased preference for Western foods is a development that has reached even the remotest areas in the country.
With all these changes in the Filipino diet, some things have remained constant. Many Filipinos still turn to the practice of alternative folk medicine by using plants, herbs, vegetables, and other foods to cure common ailments and diseases. Some of these plants and herbs are being manufactured commercially into capsules, powders, and other easily digestible forms. The ampalaya, or bitter melon, widely eaten in the country, is now available in teabag form, and it is being promoted as a treatment for a certain type of diabetes. It is also used for treating cough, liver problems, and sterility. The roots of the banaba, a flowering tree, are used for various stomach ailments, and its leaves and flowers for fevers and as a diuretic.
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