Eat more vegetables, please
Your parents shared the studies in the family group chat, you’ve read the chic thinkpieces connecting the dots to the political economy, you bookmarked the post from NYT Cooking, and now healthy meal plan ads are dotting your newsfeed.
We know Filipino food is not unhealthy. We have a wealth of unique vegetables, root crops, fruits, and fish traditionally consumed all across the archipelago and documented by cultural workers. And yet, amid the rates of lifestyle diseases affecting Filipinos, we’re beginning to realize it’s our dietary preferences that are unhealthy.
The head knowledge is there, and now that the spirit is willing, how do we make the flesh stronger?
Yes, change is possible
I was fortunate to be raised in a genuine Ilokano household, and I was able to influence my long-term partner to enjoy their veggies, and they, in turn, noticed how the most accessible food places—from tapsi houses to noodle and dimsum shops to street food stalls, and of course, fast food joints—did not even offer vegetable sides.
They even sent me this post, showing how Jollibee in Vietnam has more balanced meals than the Jollibee here in the Philippines! (You could go pilosopo with me and argue that French fries count, but friend, it is you and not I who ultimately answers to your colon.)
But yes, change is possible. Even before noticing the lack of greens in our common food options, I noticed my partner stopped dumping the side veggies onto my plate, began swapping candy for yogurt, until it was them choosing vegetable dishes as we ate out.
So, how do you enable behavioral change? Like any habit, it takes small, consistent steps over weeks—and even months—to get into. Dumping a plate of veggies all at once, like going cold turkey from a vice, might actually be counterproductive.
I’ve found that rather than counting down the days left “before a habit is formed,” it’s more effective to count up each day you manage to do what needs to be done. So rather than “29 days left till I finish this challenge,” you might want to reframe it as “Wow! Day one of a meal with a portion of veggies!”
Even if you keep going back to day one, that’s still more instances of engaging with the neural networks around a good habit.
Another tactic that might work is one I’ve gleaned from vegetarian restaurants: They offer meat substitutes as a “gateway drug” (veggie meat skewers, banana heart burger patties, veggie kare-kare using tofu) until one feels ready to order the “bona fide vegetarian” dishes like pinakbet and vegetable curry—not from a place of guilt, but from genuine enjoyment of each vegetable’s flavors.
Finally, the mindset of just adding more veggies rather than entirely eliminating favorite dishes might help, too. There’s no need to ditch the tapa or fried chicken, but you can brighten your plate with a ream of lettuce or a light salad of cucumbers and tomatoes.
Oftentimes, it might mean having a ready supply of veggies at home. Sometimes, too, home might be the only place where it’s feasible to get your daily dose of fiber. Don’t most things start and end at home, anyway?
Three healthy dishes on rotation
Here are three dishes I rotate regularly, many of them doable with palengke ingredients and a few special ingredients from the supermarket. We don’t have to break the bank to take healthier steps:
1. Mediterranean salad
I reverse-engineered this dish from visits to Italian, Greek, and Arabic restaurants, taking note of the common ingredients and flavor profiles of their salads.
Key ingredients: Olive oil, lemon, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers
Optional ingredients: Cashews for the Arabic taste, feta for the Greek kick, Parmesan for the Italian flavor. Crushed walnuts, pecans, or sliced almonds, and sunflower seeds for added texture
Preparation: In a large bowl, toss the ingredients in layers—greens, dressing, toppings, followed by another round of greens, dressing, and toppings. After the last layer, mix everything until the dressing and toppings are evenly spread. Refrigerated, the dish can last up to three days.
Econo-swap: Switch out the feta cheese for kesong puti, calamansi with water, or pure dayap can replace the lemon.
2. Miso soup
The full version of the beloved Japanese side soup is surprisingly easy to make. And since you’re in control, you can garnish as much as you want.
Key ingredients: At its most basic form, miso soup is made from soybean paste with fish stock or dashi.
Optional ingredients: Seaweed (traditionally wakame), carrots, shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, kamote
Garnishes: Sliced leeks, green onion, silken tofu
Preparation: Heat dashi in water until the broth boils. Turn the heat off and add the miso paste, stirring and letting it cook in the residual heat. Add the garnishes immediately after. I like to cook the vegetables that need more cook time (seaweeds and root crops) with the stock at the start for added nuance. You can also blanch them separately.
Econo-swap: No miso paste? Doenjang from your corner Korean grocer helps (just use less since it’s stronger than miso paste, even if both are made from soybeans). You can find dashi in almost any Japanese mart, or improvise with our local abundance of dried fish. For a full-on vegetarian version, you can swap the dashi with the water from reconstituting dried shiitake mushrooms.
3. My Tito’s Inabraw
A core memory from summers in my home province is my Tito’s take on Isabela inabraw, a saluyot soup paired best with steaming white rice and chicken (sometimes frog leg) adobo.
My Tito’s version was closer to a stew, using minimal water and more saluyot for a thicker consistency. His version was also ungarnished and flavored with just a pinch of salt. I never realized “warm” and “refreshing” could describe the same dish.
Key ingredients: Any locally available green leafy vegetable
Optional ingredients: More vegetables! Use the Bahay Kubo folk song as a cookbook, from stems to root crops and fruit-veggies like tomatoes.
Preparation: Boil the vegetables in the order appropriate to each individual vegetable, but you can “overcook” your base leafy green to fully extract its juices.
On the hottest days, I’ve also eaten my inabraw cold, opting not to reheat it, and it still works, much like the garnishes on zaru soba.
Doing something good for yourself
Having a more balanced meal, adding a fibrous dish, having one meatless meal, or even a one meatless day can all be starting points or points to return to. What matters is that you did something good for yourself and for the environment and had fun. In all cases, the seeds for better days for ourselves and the planet are already planted.
Who knows what they’ll bloom into?
