Golden grain

STREETS of gold.

On a recent journey to the north of Luzon, I saw the local practice of drying rice on the highway.

Even outside the urban centers, Luzon is blessed with superhighways. In Dagupan and Cabanatuan, half of the highways and even narrow feeder roads are covered by rice being dried.

These grain gardens are swept and raked into rows occupying half of the road. Set off by endless rice fields in brilliant quilts of green, the streaming grains, poured by workers into sacks, are redolent of abundance.

For drivers, though, the practice of drying rice on highways is a nuisance. Vehicles are forced to share the remaining lanes in a highway ironically expanded to decongest traffic.

The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has advised farmers and rice traders not to dry their produce on national roads, particularly the McArthur Highway or the Manila North Road, widened and improved to improve access to the Ilocos Region; the Cagayan Valley Road going to Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela; and the Manila South Road or Daang Maharlika leading to Bicol.

Obstructions placed to prevent vehicles from driving over the drying “palay” pose a threat to road safety, pointed out the DPWH.

Yet, the practice endures. Local culture, particularly the influence of local elites, dictates what constitutes as unbreakable custom.

In more ways than one, Luzon’s thoroughfares of grains are truly “Daang Maharlika (high by birth, rank or title)”.

It’s not only the DPWH that’s against the practice of rice-drying on roads. In a 2011 online post, the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) of the Department of Agriculture published its “Panatang Maka-palay (“Save Rice, Save Lives" pledge)”.

First vow on the list: “I will discourage and avoid drying ‘palay' on busy roads and highways as this will reduce the quality of the grains.”

The rest of the RICEponsibility campaign is relevant, specially in the approaching holidays, when many Filipinos bond through feasting.

Order rice in half-portions or bring home what cannot be consumed. I remember a catered lunch when two cups of rice were served per participant. A colleague took home the extra rice for her pet cats.

Another PhilRice advice is to recycle cooked rice. Garlic or fried rice for breakfast tastes better when leftover rice is used rather than newly cooked rice.

The PhilRice also promotes more nutritious rice substitutes, such as corn, sweet potatoes, “gabi,” cassava, and banana. Root crops have lower glycemic index (GI), representing less risk for heart disease or type 2 diabetes.

When I put rice on my plate, do I see and value each grain?


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)


*First published in SunStar Cebu’s December 3, 2017 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata"

Once upon a mais

NOTHING is more at home in the Cebuano gut than bugas-mais (corn grits).

For lunch, we had goso (seaweed), fried fish, and rice-corn combo. Since we are island dwellers, the first two dishes are regular fare on our table.

The third dish is courtesy of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) team, which conducted a recent inquiry to determine the feasibility of promoting a combination of 70 percent rice and 30 percent corn throughout the UP system.

What struck me while I was organizing the FGD in Cebu was the general puzzled reactions: why combine rice and corn?

The Institute of Plant Breeding, Crop Science Cluster of the College of Agriculture of UPLB placed the rice-corn blend’s health benefits on the product label: the low glycemic index of corn promotes slow digestion, which in turn prevents the sudden rise in blood sugar, builds up stamina, and diminishes the craving for snacks.

Though helping diabetics, dieters, and the “figure-conscious,” corn grits lag behind rice. According to an article by Dr. Serlie Barroga-Jamias on uplb.edu.ph, some people think that mais is only fit for the poor or livestock.

To promote this “food for champions,” the UPLB researchers produced, after several taste tests, a rice-corn blend that “tastes and looks like pure rice”.

Perhaps needed in Luzon, is this dietary sleight of hand required in Visayas and Mindanao, traditional corn-eaters?

During the 2008 rice crisis, the Cebu Province promoted sinanduloy, which combines rice with the cheaper and more nutritious kamote (sweet potato).

However, it will take more than the nation’s problems with rice production and importation to reduce Filipinos to the measures demanded by wartime deprivation.

Contemporary Cebuanos eat rice and corn separately. Cebu has no shortage of sellers, with buyers even choosing the milled size of the corn grits.

In wet markets, Numero Disesais (no. 16) costs P700 for a sack of about 48 kilos. That’s about P28 per kilo of corn grits while the Ganador variety of white, polished rice costs about P50. For budget-conscious Cebuanos, the P65 price of a kilo of rice-corn blend is steep.

However, after learning that friends in the south of Cebu now buy bugas-mais when they once planted corn for consumption, I realized that more than taste trends and market prices determine the future of corn-eating.

Climate change has made many Cebu farmers balk at investing in fertilizers and pesticides. Raising pigs and goats is quicker and more lucrative.

Coupled with “unlimited rice” and the fast food trend of exclusively serving polished rice, will bugas-mais eventually disappear from our tables and palates?


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s February 19, 2017 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

One and only

EAT less carbs, warns everyone from endocrinologists to cardiologists and nephrologists. Do we? Or are you still eating rice with “pansit (noodles)”?

My classmate Dem and I belong to the Pinoy population that remains happily not weaned from rice. When we caught up over a meal, Dem and I ended with culinary confusions because it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner.

His pan de sal paired with chips mystified Dem. My Italian-sounding dish swam in the classic Pinoy flavors of oily and salty. But our talk meandered off to rice, for many Pinoys, the one and only.

The year 2004 was the International Year of Rice. “Rice is life” is not just development mantra. The millions living in developing countries depend on rice for 27 percent of their energy and 20 percent of their dietary protein, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Dem and I ordered whole-grain bread because of the benefits of fiber. So why did we dwell wistfully on rice, fluffy, white and stripped off its high-fiber layer of bran, oils, vitamins and minerals?

How many anecdotes about healthy bran and quinoa can you summon? I have none. On the other hand, I can recount from experience eating-out fads that involve rice: “kinamot (eating with hands),” rice with free soup or gravy, and “unli rice”.

Our rice habits define our conformity with and rebellion against culture. Even to please his girlfriend, Dem won’t stop eating rice and pansit. Our other classmate Mark once asked me if his Cebuano hosts, by serving him seven pieces of “puso (hanging rice),” liked or disliked him.

The puzzle’s answer lies in geography, not numbers. Cebu City sellers make small, hard puso. Those in Badian, Carcar and Danao not just make theirs as large as a giant’s fist; they’re soft and fragrant from “tapul,” a purple-hued grain. To verify my answer, Mark should visit Cebu again.

A more complex puzzle concerns genetically modified rice. Last Apr. 8, Bill Gates was spotted in Los Baños, Laguna. Officials would not confirm or deny that the world’s richest man visited the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

According to Rappler, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is IRRI’s biggest philanthropic sponsor. It funnels $18 million annually to IRRI’s food and nutrition security programs, which seeks to come up with climate change-ready varieties that can adjust to drought or survive under water for more than two weeks.

Due to its experiments with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), IRRI clashes with environmentalists and farmers. In the eye of a controversy is Golden Rice, genetically modified to contain higher amounts of Vitamin A, the lack of which weakens the immune system and causes blindness and death.

After passing IRRI field tests, Golden Rice may be available commercially by 2016, reported the Agence France-Presse in Nov. 2013. Those opposing Golden Rice say the GMO conflicts with the Philippines’ goal of creating a niche in the export of organic or specialty rice. Aside from threatening biodiversity, Golden Rice’s claimed benefits to human health are also questioned.

How informed are we about GMOs? For a public that’s just torn whether to eat a cup of rice or half, fried or steamed, the motto, “rice is life,” should resonate more as an issue affecting life and death.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s April 12, 2015 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”