Eat well. Live well.

“You are what you eat” the saying goes. And it’s very true. Sometimes we realize this much later in life when we have threats to our health. But if we start feeding children the right food when they are young, they will form eating habits that will make them healthier for life. 
Nutrition is nourishment the way Nature intended it to be. Good nutrition is knowing what food to eat more of and what to avoid.

I remember our lessons in the food groups when I was in grade school. At home, it was supported by a balanced meal – mostly fish and vegetables and occasionally a beef and pork dish. We also grew up eating fruits from our backyard – santol, mangoes, caimito, atis and papaya. We learned how to climb trees and pick the fruits ourselves.

These days, children see the fruits in supermarkets – imported apples, oranges and pears. So it would be a nice experience for children to visit orchards and see where local fruits come from. This is how we can also preserve our local produce and teach the youth about local culture.

Besides fruits, we learned at a young age to eat okra and ampalaya, the former a slimy kind of vegetable my Mom put in sinigang and the latter always cooked with eggs or with shrimps. It was a challenge to be able to eat the bitter ampalaya and we took the challenge, as it was “adulting” if you could stand the taste of ampalaya.

We never talked about nutrition but we ate a variety of fruits and vegetables – and maybe that was it. It was forming that habit while we were young. I feel lucky to have been fed by an adventurous mother and a “curious eater” father. My Dad gave us extreme cuisine from his hunting trips, like locusts, fowl of a different kind from chicken like quail, other birds they shot and tapa from horse meat! 
We learned how to eat pulot or molasses straight from Bulacan, and we also knew the origins of food – Baliwag chicharon, putong pulo (Polo, Bulacan) and burong dalag (fermented mudfish) from Pampanga.

When we reached adulthood and went our own ways, my siblings added to their food repertoire as they adapted to life where they settled. Some raised their families in the US and it was Germany for another. So as I look back, our nutrition program was only common until the others moved out of the family home.

As I settled in the Philippines, my influences would be from travels and curiosity to taste different cultures through their food. So I could relate well to many Asian destinations as we had similarities in taste and ingredients (laksa, mee siam, nasi goreng, mohinga of Burma, nasi lemak of Malaysia, etc). I loved visiting friends in Asia who toured me to food destinations, from street food to more formal settings.

Now, in the age of COVID and comorbidities, you wish to look back at how you ate in your family home and later in your place of work or home as you raise a family.
Nutrition and eating habits change and we adopt new habits maybe because of economic reasons and social influences. We could be eating the most expensive steak but that and ordinary Batangas beef are the same in how they nourish us. We could be eating imported tuna but that and galunggong are the same in how they add to our omega 3 and 6.

We could be eating apples and oranges for vitamins but our local fruits also provide vitamins in their natural form. We could be eating lettuce and arugula while some like pechay and kangkong. Same vitamins. Different price points. 
So ultimately you must look at what influenced your eating habits to know what comorbidities you will soon experience.

Heredity has a lot to do with how we react to stress, vaccines, even how we get and survive diseases. So look at your family history as it is one of the predisposing factors to heart disease, hypertension and now COVID. Did you eat well as a family? Were you introduced to local fare or was it a variety of canned goods and imported processed food? 
Were you always a meat-loving family or did you eat fish and chicken too?

To assess how our immunity can be boosted, we also have to think about what we eat everyday. And check how our food habits and family food culture had developed. You must think of what you ate growing up and what you eat now as an adult.

It’s never too late to change, as I just met a couple who went vegetarian and pescatarian because they saw the numbers on the doctors’ tests. More than just taking medication they chose to give themselves proper nutrition. And now their numbers are improving not because of pills, but because they are eating better.

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” It’s so true that no matter how you went astray in your diet, you can come back and change everything just with what you do everyday, three times a day. That’s eating the right food to increase our immunity to disease and to live well.

Filipino Food Month may have ended yesterday, but eating local and eating well are never ending. Eat well. Live well. It has never been so relevant.