Real Food

Have you ever wondered why cities are called concrete jungles? The reason is not just the skyscrapers, which replaced once lush forests. The reason may have something to do with food.

During their hunting-gathering days, our ancestors would scour the jungles to search for food. Wild animals that they hunted provided their proteins. Before discovering other edibles such as wild fruits, herbs, shrubs and other plants, our ancestors may have experimented a lot. Our ancestors had to learn which plant or fruit was edible or poisonous. They also discovered later on which plant or fruit or bark of tree or root of a shrub was medicinal.

We may be in the 21^st century, but we are on the same boat as our hunting-gathering ancestors. Like our ancestors, we have to hunt for real food that can nourish our bodies while we are in any concrete jungle in the world. If we want real food, we won’t just settle for a burger or a pizza. Real food that can give us vitamins and minerals is found elsewhere. So we have to search or hunt as our ancestors did.

For us Asians and even for Africans, there’s no food as real as a simple broth with a variety of vegetables plus steamed rice. Sabah’s state capital of Kota Kinabalu, for example, has cafes and restaurants that serve indigenous Kadazan village food. These include steamed fish, clams, lobsters and a variety of tops and shoots and three kinds of ferns. For pure vegetarians, they can go for tofu plus various kinds of beans, legumes and grains for their protein. And these are also available in street food stalls, where one can get a good breakfast for three ringgits.

We share almost the same traditional cuisine culture with the Kadazan who simply steam, blanch, boil or simmer many of their food. They use less oil and no MSG (monosodium glutamate). They simply use salt and a little sugar plus locally available spices such as ginger, garlic, onions, lemongrass, and other herbs from their mountains, forests and paddy fields.

In the Philippines, healthy cooking includes the dinengdeng or inabraw of the Ilocanos, the nilambong of the Igorots, the tinola of the Tagalogs and Visayans, and many other traditional ways such as pangat, paksiw, ginataan, and tamarind-flavored broths.

The key to healthy eating, say health food experts, is being able to get a variety of vitamins and minerals besides protein and energy. The simple malunggay, for example, is one of Manny Pacquiao’s hidden secrets behind those punches that made him a boxing champ. Former Secretary Juan Flavier himself has promoted malunggay because of its multi-vitamins and minerals from A to Z.

In a globalizing world where global food chains are homogenizing our palates, we have to hunt for the real food, which carries with them age-old traditions handed down from our ancestors. No burger please, which is as predictable as a Hollywood movie or its Pinoy clone.