Whether we love it or hate it, Christmas in the Philippines is often a full-blown festival. Along with the season comes the street-to-street presence of the parol, the recurring Yuletide tunes in shopping malls and markets, and of course, the ever-abundant supply of Christmas ham.
For people who eat these, it’s hard to deny the palatable joy provided by Christmas ham and its cousins, bacon and lechon—or at least it seemed hard to deny. Just last October, experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement saying that eating processed meats could cause colorectal cancer, while red meat was also linked to the disease.
What followed was an outburst of reactions on social media ranging from confusion to rejection to unflinching devotion to consuming these meats. Past the noise and criticism however, at the heart of the discussion was the insight of how science had come to dominate our perceptions of food.
The landscape of food has been burdened by science, by nutrition, by numbers. The entire bacon fiasco sent journalists clamouring to debunk or reify the claim—each with its own twist, but each coming with its own scientific values and statistics. Most end up as news fodder, but not without a few weeks of buzz until the new claim comes.
For quite some time now, we’ve clung onto the idea that science has figured out food. This view is far, however, from the reality at hand.
One thing to understand is that science in food is reductionist in nature. For nutrients to be studied, these have to be isolated and reduced to its most principal form. Though research provides accurate studies on nutrients and how they affect the body, it also makes us look at food in terms of its parts, and not its entirety.
In her book Food Politics, Marion Nestle, a New York University nutritionist, states, “The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of the food, the food out of the context of the diet, and the diet out of the context of the lifestyle.”
Understanding the singularities of food lead to a more austere comprehension of the complexities of culture and lifestyle. It looks at food in a codified language, a language that reduces a tradition that is heavily entrenched in history, community, and culture into numbers, statistics, and lofty claims.
In her book entitled Sarap: Essays on Philippine Food, Doreen Fernandez, the foremost researcher of food in the Philippines, discusses how food means different things in different cultures. For example, the French consider food an art and the chef its artist—untouchable and perfect in itself. One cannot tweak another’s dish—it’s rude. On the other hand, Filipino cuisine makes the provisions for tweaking, allowing one to dip in soy, lather in fish sauce, or bury in bagoong. Different philosophies, different ideologies, both beautiful.
The concept of food is regional. It differs in each city, province, and household. The very effects of food cannot be compiled solely within letters and figures, but in experience, feeling, and nostalgia. It’s one of the most personal and universal pieces of culture, and it speaks greatly of who we are and where we come from.
Science has no doubt made significant contributions to our day-to-day lives. But perhaps we have put too much faith in science as well—beyond blindly clinging to its facts and predictions, we also need to see food in a more holistic light as living, breathing artifacts of our history and culture.
