Psycho-Historical Meaning and Socio-Cultural Function of Food:

Abstract

This article elucidates on the importance of understanding the psycho-historical meaning and socio-cultural functions of food based on perceptions and lived experiences in the Philippines and its periphery. Some of our food choices, food habits, and foodways are survivals of our ancient traditions, practices, and usages resurfacing at the comfort zone of the dining space.

Keywords: food, psycho-history, socio-cultural,

I would say that food – any food for that matter, always interest me. I love to eat. For me cooking and eating is a performance art. I also enjoyed exploring the country’s culinary landscape and its traditional food ways.

In her paper entitled Culture Ingested: Notes on the Indigenization of Philippine Food[i], eminent Filipino food historian Doreen G. Fernandez reveals: “Filipino food today as shaped by Philippine history and society consists of a Malay matrix, in which melded influences from China and India (through trade), Arabia (through trade and Islamization), Spain and America (through colonization), and more recently the rest of the world (through global communication).”

I agree with this point as Filipino food names suggest various cultural borrowings. Further, Fernandez notes, “The process of borrowing went on in innumerable Philippine households through many years. It was a conscious and yet unconscious cultural reaction, in that borrowers knew that they were cooking foreign dishes while making necessary adaptations, but where not aware that they were transforming the dish and making it their own.” Any foreign dish introduced to the native cook is transformed into something new, fitting to the ingredients available in his locale and entrenched to the native lifestyle.

Traditional cooking methods, for example, include roasting, boiling, and steaming. The process of pag gigisa or sautéing “is a technique foreign to the indigenous cuisine” which the native cook may have learned from the Chinese stir-frying “in which food cut up in small pieces is moved quickly around a little oil/lard”. It may have been learned also from the Spanish gisa/gisado who sauté in “olive oil with perhaps an onion and a garlic clove.” The native cook transforms the foreign sautéing by adding his local flair of what is now a seemingly standardized method: heat the oil and sauté the garlic, onion, tomato and sahog base in strictly that order.

Whereas, the participatory and bayanihan aspect of Philippine dining is manifested in the always visible item on the Filipino table – the sawsawan (condiments). Unlike in western culinary milieu, where the dinner would not tamper with the food prepared by the chef because it would be an insult or discourtesy. The Filipino however, is an active actor-player in the dining table. He loves to add his input into the culinary experience by creating his own sawsawan. It is not an insult or discourtesy to the local chef/cook, it is perceived as a communal engagement and the person who prepared the food understands this intrinsic Filipino dining quirk.

Let us now focus our attention on one of the commonly perceived eating practice among the Filipinos: avoid taking the last piece of food on a serving plate. Why do Filipinos generally behave this way?

Katrina Escalona points out, “While doing otherwise isn’t exactly offensive, the practice of not taking the last pieces of food from the center of the table is subconsciously practiced by most Filipinos. This is mostly out of shyness in case anybody else at the table is still hungry. Among close friends and family, it’s more common for someone to lightly and jokingly announce that he’ll be taking the last piece upon doing so. While in less intimate circles, someone who wants the last piece might first offer it around the table, and after several refusals, only then take it for himself.”[ii]

While Escalona may be correct in her observations, it is important that we understand the root of such eating practice. I propose that there must be a deeper psychological and historical meaning to this persistent cultural pattern. Could it be rooted to the ritual/ceremonial traditions of our ancient ancestors? The indigenous inhabitants practiced the offering of the first fruits of the land to their gods. During harvest time, for example, food is offered to thank for the bountiful harvest. It is only after such ritual when the tribe-community would partake of the rest of the food.

Thus, it could be argued that the practice of leaving the last piece of food on the serving plate is perhaps a subconscious act of offering the last piece to the gods. The last piece of food on the serving plate is basically an offering - a “food for the gods”. Subsequently, such food habit or dining slips resurface from our repressed psycho-historical selves. Resurfacing from centuries of overlays from external-foreign cultural elements in light and unguarded moment at the dining space.

The study of food can be approached from various perspectives and dimensions. The culinary landscape and food ways in the Philippines and its periphery is replete with a cornucopia of tastes and flavorings, colonial, indigenous and/or indigenized. For instance, food choice reflects the ways “people think, feel and eat food.” A study in Iran elucidates on this: “Food choice not only influences health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities, but also influences agriculture, environment, business, culture, and economy at local, regional, national, and global levels.”[iii] Moreover, Naomichi Ishige, a Japanese anthropologist, adds, “Eating is the act of ingesting the environment.”[iv]

This part delves into the socio-cultural function of food and foodways. It identifies general usages of food and the role or importance it plays in the Philippines and its periphery. In this presentation we will enumerate two (2) categories on functions of foods, namely: 1) nutritional and 2) non-nutritional. The non-nutritional function of food includes the following: ritual/ceremonial function, medicinal function, supernatural/magical function, economic function, and social function.

First, we choose and consume food for its nutritional and dietary value or significance. Food is believed to contain components such as antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, etc. which are helpful to the biological/physiological sustenance and development of the body. Food is perceived to provide fuel for the body. Consequently, food that is perceived to cause health imbalances are avoided.

Second, the non-nutritional aspect of food is its use in ritual/ceremonial activities. Indigenous inhabitants place food in earthenware as an offering to appease malevolent gods and spirits. It is also a way to supplicate from their deities for good harvest and abundance in the tribe-community. The Bagobos for example, offer buyo and rice to their patron of marriage Todlai. Further, Lucero notes, “The daily activities of the Bagobo are marked by rituals. They offer areca nuts, betel leaves, food, clothing, and brass instruments, all placed on special altars for the blessing of their diwata, and for obtaining immunity from the buso (malignant spirits) and spirits of the departed.”[v] Lucero also reveals that “None of the prepared food may be eaten until the mabalian [priestess] has cooked and distributed some of the rice to the various buwis [shrines]. She also offers a few rice stalks to the spirits, again calling on them one by one.”[vi]

Third, the medicinal function of food is a familiar experience for most people in the Philippines. Herbs and spices plays a visible role along this medicinal usages of food. A mother who just gave birth to a child may be given a warm soup for her to recover from the hardship of labor and for her to recuperate lost energy. One who has a cough or cold is asked to sip or eat certain foods believed to provide healing effects to the ailing person.

Fourth, it is also perceived that food possess supernatural/magical functions. The bawang (garlic) for instance, is believed to ward off the feared aswang. The role of food as amulet/talisman to counter evil spirits and entities in the form of lana/langis (oils) can still be observed in several places in the country. Or, if a person is taken by an engkanto to their place; is offered black rice and white rice, the person should not eat the black rice offered if he wants to get out from the enchanted situation.

Fifth, food serves as good for trade and enterprise. The economic function of food is visible in the public markets, canteens, carenderia, restaurants, and sari-sari stores. An enterprising individual can build wealth by selling and providing services related to food and its consumption. Nations also engage in export and imports of food and its related items contributing immensely to its economic fundamentals and growth.

Finally, food has a social function. Family celebrations and social occasions like weddings, school graduations, and passing board exams are connected to the consumption of food. This positive association on food plays a role in strengthening social bonds among family members, relatives, friends, and the community in general. The family gathers around the dinning space sharing life stories and memories while partaking the prepared food. The preparation and cooking of the food is a socially engaging activity itself. Family members share roles in preparing the ingredients such as peeling the vegetables, cutting the needed spices and herbs, and cleaning the fish or chicken meat.

Food also serve other socio-cultural functions. For married couples, there are certain foods believed to be aphrodisiacs which are helpful for sexual potency and reproductive health. Eating durian, balut, spicy condiments, and sea urchin meat, among others, is perceived to possess such qualities. Drinks like the tuba (coconut wine), buko juice, watermelon and calamansi juices are also perceived to have this efficacy. Thus, the human life cycle from birth to death, from womb to tomb is closely associated with the consumption of food. The people in the Philippines and its periphery are no exemption to this.

Hospitality is another aspect of food’s social function. One common Philippine character trait is hospitality. Interestingly, our warmth and friendliness as a people corresponds to our food habits. In western cultures they ask a person they have just met with “How are you?”. In the Philippines we ask “Kumain kana?” (Did you eat already?) or “Tara, kain tayo” (Come, let’s eat).

Historical records of the first contact between the colonizers and the indigenous inhabitants of the islands are filled with ethnographic accounts of cordiality related to offering of food and drinks to the foreigners. When the Magellan expedition came into contact with the king of Mazzaua in 1521, the king gave Magellan “three porcelain jars covered with leaves and full of rice and two Orades, which are fairly large fish, and gave him some other things.”[vii] When Pigafetta accompanied the king ashore he was offered with a “dish of pork and wine”; after they proceeded to the king’s house “again a new round of eating and drinking.”[viii] Pigafetta’s description of Mazzaua is very telling: “In that island there is a great quantity of dogs, cats, pigs, poultry, and goats, of rice, ginger, coconuts, figs [banana], oranges, lemons, millet, wax, and gold mines.”[ix] As a matter of fact, the Europeans came to the Orient in order to have a direct access on the spice trade. The spices having a growing demand in the European kitchens and used for adding flavor and taste to their otherwise bland foods.

For historians, it is interesting to understand people’s psycho-historical meaning and socio-cultural associations of food. How did people respond to their environment? Why they behave the way they do as reflected in their food habits and food ways? What are the psycho-historical meaning and socio-cultural association of food based on people’s perceptions and lived experiences?

According to John Cassel, “It is no coincidence that one of the major areas of interest common to both the health professions and the social sciences should center round the topic of food. From the dawn of medical history, the role of food in health and disease has been under investigation by health workers, and its significance increases as further advances in nutritional knowledge are made. For social scientists a study of food ways and the system of attitudes, beliefs, and practices surrounding food may constitute an important technic in unraveling the complexities of the over-all culture pattern of a community…. food habits are among the oldest and most deeply entrenched aspects of many cultures, and cannot therefore be easily changed, or if changed, can produce a further series of unexpected and often unwelcome reactions.”[x]

The study on food, food choice, food habits, and foodways is a vast area for historical research. However, as Filipino food historian Doreen G. Fernandez laments, there are only a few takers and explorers in this field. Perhaps, we can venture into this area of historical research particularly in relation to climate change, geo-history, food security, traditional knowledge, nutrition transition, and public policy.

Unlike other articles or objects of material culture, food is something that is consumed. The evidence of food as an artifact is “digested and transformed – and thus no longer available in archives, or for carbon dating. Yet in a way, one can say that the evidence is always being manufactured and discovered anew, every day, in every meal in every home.”[xi]

As a conclusion, this presentation elucidates on the importance of understanding the psycho-historical meaning and socio-cultural functions of food based on perceptions and lived experiences in the Philippines and its periphery.

Some of our food choices, food habits, and foodways are survivals of our ancient traditions, practices, and usages resurfacing at the comfort zone of the dining space. The assertions and arguments advanced herewith are only preliminary and tentative. An in-depth study and fieldwork is advised in order to come out with a rigorous and robust data and research output.

Lastly, perhaps we would be already historically aware of the food nuances and quirks the next time we eat our meal. Makan. Let’s eat!

[i] Reprinted in Gastronomica, Journal of Food and Culture Vol. 5 No. 1, 2003. pp. 58-71

[ii]Accessed 28 April 2019 from https://theculturetrip.com/asia/philippines/articles/how-to-eat-like-a-true-filipino/ at 3:00 p.m. How to Eat Like a True Filipino. Updated 17 August 2017.

[iii] Arezoo Haghighian Roudsari, et al. “Psycho-Socio-Cultural Determinants of Food Choice: A Qualitative Study on Adults in Social and Cultural Context of Iran”. Iran J Psychiatry 2017; 12: 4: 241-250.

[iv] Cited in Fernandez, Ibid.

[v] Rosario Cruz-Lucero, et. al. Bagobo. Accessed 30 April 2019 (10:45 A.M.) from nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph

[vi] Lucero, Ibid.

[vii] Cited in Greg Hontiveros, 2004. Butuan of a Thousand Years. Butuan City Historical & Cultural Foundation, Inc. Butuan City: Philippines. p. 58.

[viii]Hontiveros, Ibid. pp. 58-59

[ix] Hontiveros, Ibid. p. 61

[x] “Social and Cultural Implications of Food and Food Habits”. Health, Culture, and Community, pp. 15-41. Benjamin Paul, ed. Russell Sage Foundation, 1955.

[xi] Fernandez, Ibid.