Most non-Filipino are clueless how to eat Filipino food, though that appears to be changing somewhat since the internet keeps saying it is the next big thing and currently on the rise.
Almost everything is made to be eaten with rice. Most westerners can’t wrap their head around that, yet eat mountains of wheat and corn and never think about it. The average Filipino eats 130kg of rice per year or 285 pounds roughly. The Average American consumes 130 pounds of wheat, 5 pounds of oats, 1 pound of rye, a whopping 52 pounds of barley most of which is used to make beer, and a staggering 2000 pounds of corn with roughly 75% of that being fed to the animals we eat. Over a 100 pounds of that corn is also high fructose corn syrup. Comparing those figures, 285 pounds of white rice, which stores better than brown in the wet tropics, doesn’t sound nearly as bad.
The traditional foods reflect the climate of the country and the economics of 1500 inhabited islands. Salt and sugar weigh heavily in the diet as both are produced locally and lend themselves well to food preservation. Soups and stews are the most dishes which are meant to be ladled over rice. Palm oil is the inexpensive fat of choice for frying as it is produced locally, but foreigners not used to it often blame their GI problems on the water or the cleanliness of the food, people, or establishment. Very few dishes are baked or roasted as ovens are few and far between and mostly exist in commercial establishments. While outdoor grilling is popular especially for street food most people don’t do this at home, even in rural areas where it is somewhat more economical.
Most foreigners don’t use the condiments. This is a lack of understanding that you are supposed to and this foreign notion that if a cook wanted you to use the condiments they would have put it on there for you. The most common will be vinegar based, though the local citrus fruit, calamansi, is also popular. Spicy mayo, chili sauces, soy based mixes, and some more exotic fermented sauces round out the most common ones. Skipping the rice and the condiments leaves you with the sort of bland, fatty, salty, and overly sweet food that no Filipino wants to eat either
Foreigners tend to disparage the lack of fresh vegetables in the Filipino diet, but this is not without its reasons. Centuries of densely packed people and regular flooding leave a lot of farm land with so much bacterial buildup in the soils that eating raw vegetables or any meat less than well done a chancy proposition. Until I bought a hydroponic garden and some sprouting trays my wife had never in her life had raw vegetables that weren’t imported.
There is also a problem growing a lot of vegetables westerners love like corn and potatoes. Some corn is grown and well loved, especially as popcorn or street food. The problem with it is it takes more human calories to produce than is gained so that means it is a pricey import. Tropical potatoes in their jumbo varieties are the size of a racquetball not the monsters we grow in colder climates. They and most other locally grown root vegetables or vegetables in general don’t keep well in the tropical heat.
In the end most foreigners who say they don’t like Filipino food just don’t understand Filipino food.
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