We have raised a generation of kids on fast food, just as we have been raised on a tradition of Filipino comfort foods. Now Filipino comfort foods – adobo, kare kare, sisig, sinigang, lechon, tapsilog etc. – are as deadly as their fast food counterparts. More so that such comfort food are hard to eat without rice, platefuls of rice. Rice was stapled with our traditional comfort food whether we eat with spoon and fork or with our kamay. Every family has its variation and combination of comfort foods, and having grown up with such, our taste buds were attuned to a certain level of palatability. And then there are the desserts, the special halu-halo with leche flan from Little Quiapo then now Chow King or the sans rival from Goldilocks , chocolate mousse from Red Ribbon, angel cheese cake from Nonesuch, Swiss-Inn or Italiani’s . We ate all these food with such gusto, in fact it was by our word of mouth that the popularity of these delicacies spread.

We grew up with what it turns out to be wrong beliefs, but these have been inculcated into our way of life, our culture. “Busog ka na ba?” We have accepted the culture of excess, not only the eat all you can mentality, but also as a consequence, a takaw tingin smorgasbord habit. With all the dishes spread out on the table, it is customary to sample everything – nakakahiya naman kung hindi mo tikman. Then comes the clincher, your lola has brainwashed you not to leave anything in your plate. Simotin mo, sayang eh. Often children are admonished to finish everything on their plate, or else they are warned, that they have to pick up even the tiniest morsel of rice in purgatory when they die. Satiety rather than satisfaction of caloric needs was the object, and eating was not just a biologic necessity it was a social event, and the social requirement was to be busog.

The intriguing part of the NEJM article states that “some developing countries face the paradox of families in which the children are underweight and the parents are overweight”. Poverty is what drives our people to seek employment abroad; poverty, malnutrition and overpopulation is a backdrop for intrauterine growth retardation and low birthweight. Apparently, malnutrition in early life leads to the evolution of a “thrifty” phenotype, i.e. the underweight children in third world countries develop a predisposition to obesity. In our case, the children of these overseas Filipino workers left here have a predisposition to obesity later in their lives. That is, as the remittances form abroad start rolling in, children will start getting overfed and eventually become obese. And the OFW’s themselves, our sea-farers, nannies, nurses, cooks, and doctors serving on foreign shores, they too have the predisposition and can develop obsesity. A well developed ponch, like Buddha’s, they say is a sign of prosperity but is also a portent of a culture of excess. And our culture of excess will no doubt play in a role in the oncoming epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

Change is hard to effect, I cannot imagine hosting a party for balikbayans without the traditional comfort food. I cannot imagine going to a mall, and telling my kids to feast on yoghurt, a salad, and a fresh fruit platter. Change cannot come overnight, it is a lifestyle that evolved through the centuries, our tastebuds have been shaped generation after generation with a tradition of cooking, and our unique notion of what is delectable and nutrititious is a product of those long years. Eating is a social event, there is joy in sharing blessings and in reminiscing what we have learned to enjoy over the decades of family tradition. But we have to curb the culture of excess, to learn to eat what is appropriate for our level of activity. We have to learn to remove fat from our diet, notwithstanding it is the chief ingredient that makes our comfort food and fast foods delectable. We have to rediscover traditional foods that are not as fatty, our fish that we can simply steam or broil, and vegetable dishes like lumpia, sea weed salad and that sinigang and pinakbet sans the pork and rind can be like a salad. Perhaps we can cut our rice intake, and cut of our appetite for desserts to a modicum, and learn to enjoy again our fresh fruits of mangga, saging, langka, rambutan pakwan, melon, and lansones. Maybe some genius in Los Banos can develop a strain of rice that has less glycemic index like the Indian basmati variety but still be as delectable as milagrosa.

If we knew half a century ago, what we know now, maybe we would have less heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes. There was this Filipino financial attaché to Washington who got his heart attack in the 1960’s; appropo to his diplomatic status, the revered Dr. Paul Dudley White was his attending in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. White placed the diplomat on a spartan regimen of a fish diet and progressive walking exercises. The diplomat lived up to his eighties long before statins and glitazones ever reached the market. The finance whiz, hermetic in is ways, lived up to Dr. White’s prescription even when he was already living in Manila. He gave his car to his wife and his kids, he walked daily from his home in Pasay to the trade bourses in Makati and Escolta. His daily fare at home was paksiw, as spartan as his sturdy walking shoes, cheap fedora hat, white shirt and loose blank pants. He led a life of modesty and prudence, and that’s all it took.