How to eat to save the planet (and yourself)
Published Jan 20, 2018 04:05 pm
By Alex Y. Vergara
CHEMICAL FREE From left: Turmeric or luyang dilaw; batwan; and adlai
Calling slow food everything fast food isn’t may sound a tad “strong.” Instead, slow food advocate Chit Juan, one of the founding members of Slow Food Manila, defines it as “food the way nature intended it to be,” meaning not too overly processed and devoid of any traces of questionable and even harmful chemicals, additives, growth hormones, and pesticides.
As such, one of the group’s goals is to preserve and propagate traditional, endangered, and hard-to-find food varieties that were once endemic to where its members are based. And they’re based all over the world. In the Philippines, some of these once common crops that Juan and her group seek to pluck out from the verge of extinction, if not push to the mainstream are criollo, adlai, kadyos, cacao, kapeng barako, and even the iconic siling labuyo.
Fair, humane, and natural
Slow Food Manila doesn’t propagate vegetarianism. What it does is advance the fair, humane, and natural way of raising animals for food. For one, that means no to feeding them growth hormones and commercially processed feeds. As much as possible, they should be free range.
“Cows should eat grass and not grain,” says Juan. “Pigs should eat vegetables and not commercial feeds. Chickens must graze and find their grub. If ever they’re sick, they should be given natural medicines. They should be allowed enough time to grow on their own. And that means a big no to growth hormones.”
Part and parcel of their advocacy is working to give farmers and fishermen their due by paying them fair prices for their organically raised produce, free-range chicken and livestock, and sustainable fresh and seawater catch.
Slow food as a grassroots movement started in Italy sometime in the late ’80s, and has since become a global movement with chapters all over the world. Slow Food Manila, which is led by president Paula Aberasturi of Down to Earth Farms in Bukidnon, started a little over four years ago. From 40 members, it now has 300 members nationwide consisting of foodies, chefs, restaurateurs, fisherfolk, and organic farmers.
Apart from Manila, Slow Food now has chapters in Cavite and Pangasinan. In fact, even before the Manila chapter was established, slow food advocates have already opened chapters in Baguio and Negros.
Slow Food International asks each member for a 10-euro donation, which is already good for two years. Apart from getting free electronic newsletters, their donation entitles them to get special rates in Turin, Italy where the annual Salone del Gusto is held.
Live longer, healthier
“I define slow food simply as masarap (delicious), walang gamot (clean and free of chemicals and pesticides), and fair, as it seeks to pay farmers well while consumers get a fair trade. On a personal note, I want to live longer and healthier. Slow food is healthier for all of us because, for one, it doesn’t promote the use of chemical fertilizers, growth hormones, and pesticides,” says Juan.
Other leading slow food advocates in the country include chef Margarita Fores, who was introduced to it at a slow food convention in Italy in 2012 and has since embraced it by opening a farm-to-market restaurant called Grace Park, and foodie and Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Berna Romulo Puyat.
Fores’ introduction to slow food came at a time when the Philippines was starting to aggressively push Filipino cuisine on the world’s dining table. Even Cibo, her chain of Italian casual dining restaurants, has started serving natural and organic dishes such as squash soup made of organic squash and organic greens for its salads. The roast chicken was also organically grown.
“Most Western chefs that time were also starting to look toward Asia for new inspirations and ingredients,” Fores said in an earlier interview. “It was the perfect time to show to the world the uniqueness of our own Filipino ingredients.”
During one of their travels to the provinces together, Fores and Romulo-Puyat were introduced and reintroduced to a host of the country’s indigenous ingredients and culinary riches such as etag, smoked pork from the Cagayan Valley, adlai, kadyos, and heirloom rice.
At one of these provincial sorties, Fores even became a tad emotional, said Romulo-Puyat in an earlier interview, when she realized how hard it was to plant rice. The experience reminded them of what we as Filipinos have been told way back in elementary school: never waste even a single grain of rice.
Response to a broken system
“Slow food is a response primarily to a broken system,” says Juan. “Before anything reaches chefs like Margarita, for instance, an item has to pass through so many middlemen, jacking up its price in the process. What we’re trying to encourage is for chefs to go back to the farm directly.”
Fores, at every opportunity, has since used adlai or Chinese barley and other types of slow food in her restaurant and catering business. She has also championed the use of natural souring agents for her sinigang like tamarind, kamias, and batwan.
“We were trying to promote adlai as early as 2010, but we didn’t have much success until I asked Gaita if she could do something with it,” said Romulo-Puyat in an earlier interview. “And she did. Now that Asia’s Best Female Chef is using adlai in most of her catering jobs, everyone suddenly became curious about it.”
Admittedly, slow food advocates like Juan are aware of the extra cost it entails to switch from regular food to the more expensive and arguably harder to produce slow food. But if more people start demanding these types of food, chances are slow food and other organic and pesticide-free produce would become more affordable and readily available.
“It would be better for families with a limited budget to eat vegetables from a reputable source, and that means free from any traces of pesticides,” she said. “They could even start growing their own vegetables. Filipinos are lucky in this respect because we have year-round sunshine.”
Apart from its health-giving benefits, slow food is also beneficial to the environment, Juan adds, because advocates believe in biodiversity as opposed to monocropping. The natural way of farming doesn’t only ensure that consumers get, say, pesticide-free produce, it also helps save other animals.
Saving the bees
“The natural way of farming, for instance, saves bees from being unwanted casualties of pesticides,” says Juan. “They stay alive to help pollinate flowers on trees and give us different kinds of fruits.”
Speaking of fruits, Juan believes that its high time today’s kids, especially those living in the cities, are reintroduced to the richness and variety of Filipino fruits. What were once common native fruits such as duhat, chico, mabolo, siniguelas, chesa, and macopa, to name a few, are now difficult to source even in wet markets. They’ve been effectively supplanted by relatively cheap and readily available imports.
“There are more to fruits than Fuji apples, ponkans, and Valencia oranges,” she says. “Many of today’s kids and even adults are missing out on the taste and variety of native fruits.”
And since the slow food movement doesn’t advocate or encourage the use of chemical fertilizers, produce are deemed healthier for people who consume them. In the end, it also encourages everyone, even the city dweller through vertical farming, for example, to grow his or her own food for self-sustenance.
“We’re a population getting fat and unhealthy with hybrid rice,” says Juan, citing one example. “The incidence of various forms of cancer is also on the rise. What we should do is to eat well and eat less. We can achieve this by preserving our natural ways of eating and cooking. Natural also means going organic by resorting to home-produced fertilizers.”
CHEMICAL FREE From left: Turmeric or luyang dilaw; batwan; and adlai
Calling slow food everything fast food isn’t may sound a tad “strong.” Instead, slow food advocate Chit Juan, one of the founding members of Slow Food Manila, defines it as “food the way nature intended it to be,” meaning not too overly processed and devoid of any traces of questionable and even harmful chemicals, additives, growth hormones, and pesticides.
As such, one of the group’s goals is to preserve and propagate traditional, endangered, and hard-to-find food varieties that were once endemic to where its members are based. And they’re based all over the world. In the Philippines, some of these once common crops that Juan and her group seek to pluck out from the verge of extinction, if not push to the mainstream are criollo, adlai, kadyos, cacao, kapeng barako, and even the iconic siling labuyo.
Fair, humane, and natural
Slow Food Manila doesn’t propagate vegetarianism. What it does is advance the fair, humane, and natural way of raising animals for food. For one, that means no to feeding them growth hormones and commercially processed feeds. As much as possible, they should be free range.
“Cows should eat grass and not grain,” says Juan. “Pigs should eat vegetables and not commercial feeds. Chickens must graze and find their grub. If ever they’re sick, they should be given natural medicines. They should be allowed enough time to grow on their own. And that means a big no to growth hormones.”
Part and parcel of their advocacy is working to give farmers and fishermen their due by paying them fair prices for their organically raised produce, free-range chicken and livestock, and sustainable fresh and seawater catch.
Slow food as a grassroots movement started in Italy sometime in the late ’80s, and has since become a global movement with chapters all over the world. Slow Food Manila, which is led by president Paula Aberasturi of Down to Earth Farms in Bukidnon, started a little over four years ago. From 40 members, it now has 300 members nationwide consisting of foodies, chefs, restaurateurs, fisherfolk, and organic farmers.
Apart from Manila, Slow Food now has chapters in Cavite and Pangasinan. In fact, even before the Manila chapter was established, slow food advocates have already opened chapters in Baguio and Negros.
Slow Food International asks each member for a 10-euro donation, which is already good for two years. Apart from getting free electronic newsletters, their donation entitles them to get special rates in Turin, Italy where the annual Salone del Gusto is held.
Live longer, healthier
“I define slow food simply as masarap (delicious), walang gamot (clean and free of chemicals and pesticides), and fair, as it seeks to pay farmers well while consumers get a fair trade. On a personal note, I want to live longer and healthier. Slow food is healthier for all of us because, for one, it doesn’t promote the use of chemical fertilizers, growth hormones, and pesticides,” says Juan.
Other leading slow food advocates in the country include chef Margarita Fores, who was introduced to it at a slow food convention in Italy in 2012 and has since embraced it by opening a farm-to-market restaurant called Grace Park, and foodie and Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Berna Romulo Puyat.
Fores’ introduction to slow food came at a time when the Philippines was starting to aggressively push Filipino cuisine on the world’s dining table. Even Cibo, her chain of Italian casual dining restaurants, has started serving natural and organic dishes such as squash soup made of organic squash and organic greens for its salads. The roast chicken was also organically grown.
“Most Western chefs that time were also starting to look toward Asia for new inspirations and ingredients,” Fores said in an earlier interview. “It was the perfect time to show to the world the uniqueness of our own Filipino ingredients.”
During one of their travels to the provinces together, Fores and Romulo-Puyat were introduced and reintroduced to a host of the country’s indigenous ingredients and culinary riches such as etag, smoked pork from the Cagayan Valley, adlai, kadyos, and heirloom rice.
At one of these provincial sorties, Fores even became a tad emotional, said Romulo-Puyat in an earlier interview, when she realized how hard it was to plant rice. The experience reminded them of what we as Filipinos have been told way back in elementary school: never waste even a single grain of rice.
Response to a broken system
“Slow food is a response primarily to a broken system,” says Juan. “Before anything reaches chefs like Margarita, for instance, an item has to pass through so many middlemen, jacking up its price in the process. What we’re trying to encourage is for chefs to go back to the farm directly.”
Fores, at every opportunity, has since used adlai or Chinese barley and other types of slow food in her restaurant and catering business. She has also championed the use of natural souring agents for her sinigang like tamarind, kamias, and batwan.
“We were trying to promote adlai as early as 2010, but we didn’t have much success until I asked Gaita if she could do something with it,” said Romulo-Puyat in an earlier interview. “And she did. Now that Asia’s Best Female Chef is using adlai in most of her catering jobs, everyone suddenly became curious about it.”
Admittedly, slow food advocates like Juan are aware of the extra cost it entails to switch from regular food to the more expensive and arguably harder to produce slow food. But if more people start demanding these types of food, chances are slow food and other organic and pesticide-free produce would become more affordable and readily available.
“It would be better for families with a limited budget to eat vegetables from a reputable source, and that means free from any traces of pesticides,” she said. “They could even start growing their own vegetables. Filipinos are lucky in this respect because we have year-round sunshine.”
Apart from its health-giving benefits, slow food is also beneficial to the environment, Juan adds, because advocates believe in biodiversity as opposed to monocropping. The natural way of farming doesn’t only ensure that consumers get, say, pesticide-free produce, it also helps save other animals.
Saving the bees
“The natural way of farming, for instance, saves bees from being unwanted casualties of pesticides,” says Juan. “They stay alive to help pollinate flowers on trees and give us different kinds of fruits.”
Speaking of fruits, Juan believes that its high time today’s kids, especially those living in the cities, are reintroduced to the richness and variety of Filipino fruits. What were once common native fruits such as duhat, chico, mabolo, siniguelas, chesa, and macopa, to name a few, are now difficult to source even in wet markets. They’ve been effectively supplanted by relatively cheap and readily available imports.
“There are more to fruits than Fuji apples, ponkans, and Valencia oranges,” she says. “Many of today’s kids and even adults are missing out on the taste and variety of native fruits.”
And since the slow food movement doesn’t advocate or encourage the use of chemical fertilizers, produce are deemed healthier for people who consume them. In the end, it also encourages everyone, even the city dweller through vertical farming, for example, to grow his or her own food for self-sustenance.
“We’re a population getting fat and unhealthy with hybrid rice,” says Juan, citing one example. “The incidence of various forms of cancer is also on the rise. What we should do is to eat well and eat less. We can achieve this by preserving our natural ways of eating and cooking. Natural also means going organic by resorting to home-produced fertilizers.”