IT’S SAID that the Filipinos’ love affair with salty food is the natural result of being surrounded by seawater, as well as the need to preserve food, usually fish, in preparation for lean months. The way we are loading up on sodium these days, we may just as well be turning into daing ourselves. 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-bombs masquerading as packaged food. In comparison, many among the better-off still have lucid moments during which they spend some of their market money on delectables that do not come out of a can or plastic or foil packets.

	Photo courtesy of The Manila Times

In bygone days, it was the poor folk who feasted on fresh foods while the 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 abundance of goods, proof of a landlord’s wealth. This was before the advent of processed food, which actually began a U.S. solution to its problem of how to keep its soldiers fed even when they were spending days deep in the trenches. Preserved food for the Filipino rich then meant pork cooked adobo style, which was stored in clay jars, as well as an assortment of sausages and cured meats. At the same time, the landlords had the pick of everything — from the fattest hens to the whitest and finest sugar, to drinking water fetched from the clearest springs. Their daily meals were the comida fiesta of the kasama, who got 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 grew strong 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 the afflictions of people who have too much in life and dine too heartily and too well.” And, it must be added, from leading a too leisurely life as well. The landlords obviously didn’t even have to break a sweat preparing their favorite food; somebody else made sure the chickens grew plump and then 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 peeled the salted watermelon seeds one by one for the señoritas who thought nothing of eating these by the handful at a time?)

Today, however, neither rich nor poor can boast to be healthier than the other, especially with rapid urbanization and its evil twin, environmental degradation (although some may say both are as cursed), wreaking as much havoc on our lives as clueless politicians and confused policy makers, and having a profound impact on what we all eat and how often. Another version of the dining divide, though, has managed to emerge: while more Filipinos are surviving on just one meal a day, those who are able to indulge themselves have been turning frantically to diets to get rid of the evidence of food devoured in huge quantities amassing around their middle.