The making of a vegan

I was born a culinary ignoramus. Raised in a Tagalog household in Mindanao, I was torn between gastronomic opposites. Mom preferred everything fried. Dad wanted food soupy and boiled. She was a proud carnivore, the spicier or crunchier the better, and had a sweet tooth to top it all. He was a virtual vegan who thought of meat as optional or a mere accent to dishes that needed sprucing up. And because he studied dentistry, he believed that anything sugary would make you fat and require the use of dentures at a young age.

Geography and culture may explain the sharp differences in perspective and prejudice. Mom grew up in Taal, a rich coastal town, and moved to Manila for high school and college. She was, in effect, a city girl with a more sophisticated palate. This translated to elaborately prepared dishes that often revolved around meat. Vegetables and even fish were regarded as peasant food, meaning cheap fuel just to keep the body going.

Raised in agricultural Batangas between Mt. Makiling and Mt. Malarayat and far from the sea, my father grew up on backyard-grown vegetables that were often cooked in coconut or tamarind broth. Once a year at fiesta time in October, the whole barrio would go on meat overload as every household butchered pigs they otherwise raised for the market. Freshwater fish was a rare treat brought in from Taal Lake.

On our Malaybalay dining table, fried chicken legs and pork cutlets clashed with boiled cabbage and green vegetables. Like most children, we kids hated vegetables that we only partook of under duress because Dad’s word was the law.

Because we lived in what was (before Marcos’s land reform) cattle-growing country, we sometimes had beef but only if some cow in some ranch got injured, had to be put away and parceled out to different households. Otherwise this valuable livestock was meant for the Del Monte feedlots that supplied the slaughterhouses of distant Manila.

Malaybalay was a funny town. If we had natives from the barrios over for lunch or dinner, we made sure to serve them pancit or noodles from the Chinese panciteria or to open big cans of Ligo from the Namarco store and sauté the sardines with onions. That was fancy dining in their remote corner of the world. They thought of chicken or pork as ordinary stuff unsuitable for special occasions.

There were times when Dad and his buddies would go hunting and bring back lots of venison or deer meat which we marinated and dried in the sun for days on end before being sent off by Philippine Airlines cargo to relatives in Manila.

No machine-milled rice stripped of all nutrients for us in those innocent years. We got the aromatic whole grain variety hand-pounded by upland farmers who came down the mountains bearing huge rattan bags strapped to their backs.

Every morning, the government stock farm some 10 kilometers away delivered fresh milk for breakfast. This was supposed to be a big health advantage over our playmates, thanks to Dad’s veterinarian friends. But we hated the rather foul-smelling pasteurized drink that didn’t taste as good as Magnolia or Selecta milk that we usually had when we went to Manila.

When I reached grade four, we had powdered milk and bulgur wheat coming out of our ears. This was due to a youth-feeding program of the US government that, I believe, did wonders for our generation in terms of good bones and teeth at a critical time in our young lives. Sadly, the next generations would not be made to line up every afternoon to get their daily supply of proteins, except under martial law when Imelda Marcos made a fuss about distributing nutri-buns for breakfast.

Powdered milk our mothers turned into polvoron or milk candies; bulgur was made the substitute for imported oatmeal and the usual champurrado (leftover rice turned into chocolate-flavored porridge) for breakfast.

What I’m trying to point out is that, nutritionally speaking, we were not too deprived in those days. In the public schools I went to, there were posters recommending the correct proportion of proteins, carbohydrates and fats we were supposed to take on a daily basis. We recited words of wisdom like “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Indeed, apples, grapes and nuts were readily available at the Namarco store; at Christmastime, we literally suffered from imported fruit indigestion.

Native fruits like santol, oranges, pomelo, duhat, guavas, marang and durian were all there for the asking from our backyards or sold very cheap. My father had a friend with a fabulous fruit orchard a few kilometers out of town that we raided every weekend.

I still dream of the times my brother and I would race to whichever mangosteen tree we wished to climb and race to the very top. Perched from commanding heights, we merrily picked the purple fruit, squeezed it open with bare hands, slurped the succulent morsels and spitted out the occasional seed of the seedless variety grown in the farm. We would not come down until our stomachs grumbled of mangosteen abuse.

We are what we eat. Much of our physical well-being and, indeed, destiny itself, depends on the food we put into our bodies over time. Or so we are made to believe.

Bad habits start early and these are difficult or impossible to correct in adulthood. I am grateful for the relationship of tension and resulting culinary balance of power that my parents once represented. I could have gone to extremes and cast my incorrect and unhealthy preferences in cement, never to be altered despite all rational considerations to the contrary.

Without Dad’s almost tyrannical advocacy of vegetables, I would have turned into the raving carnivore that some of my siblings turned out to be, much to their obvious detriment and belated regret.

Because I was the eldest and always charged with setting the example, I was a natural target of insurgency from below.

I set the pace in academics and I was a well-behaved kid. I was hardly subject to challenge on those points. Where I was vulnerable was that I hated vegetables that did not offend my siblings as much. They danced to Dad’s music while I resisted his edict on the one issue I felt I was entitled to make up my own mind.

But Dad would never back down and I was cooked. The only cheating I ever did in my life was to pretend to be eating vegetables, but actually slyly spitting them into my napkin which I sneaked into my pocket. My siblings were not about to let that shameless behavior go unnoticed and unpunished.

They discovered the best way to put me on the spot. “Dad, kuya is not eating vegetables,” my only sister would suddenly blurt out with glee over lunch.

Dad would give me an icy stare and declare: “Better take the ampalaya (bitter melon) or you’ll eat the entire platter.”

Ampalaya was pure poison to me. The only other vegetables I loathed more were eggplants and okra. Almost in tears, I would reach for the ampalaya and go through the motions of eating as everybody stared at me with sadistic delight.

Having been caught once or twice throwing out the ampalaya or conspiring with the cook to take away my plate as soon as Dad stood up to go to siesta, there was no way I could avoid this daily ordeal of no-win confrontations.

Pop psychology would later lead me to believe that I developed the eating equivalent of Stockholm syndrome. Dad morphed in my terrorized mind from my cruel tormentor into my best friend; the dreaded vegetables transmogrified from venom to ambrosia. It took time. But I realized in my college years that Dad’s authoritarian behavior had some redeeming value, if I would only listen to his side of the argument. 

Looking back, I always wondered what those traumatic scenes of childhood had to do with my conversion, when I was 23 and living in New York, into the vegetarian or vegan side of the human divide. Years later, Dad would be surprised to know that I loved ampalaya, okra and eggplant more than he ever did.

“I used to spank you to eat those things,” he once told me with vindicated pride. 

There are vegans and there are vegans — some absolutist about no meat whatsoever, and others just partially so in practice and with some reservations.

Those who go halfway quibble over red (beef) or white (chicken) meat, and whether to take fertilized or organic eggs. Vegan purists reject anything from animals and fish alike. The prohibition extends to all milk, eggs and fish roe. Only soybean substitutes like tofu and soya meat are accepted.

I am a vegan moderate and I have my mother’s sweet tooth. Some friends call me a boutique vegan, keener on personal preference than ideological rectitude. Red and white meat are totally out for me, but not eggs and milk. I love seafood in defiance of hardliners who insist that sea creatures also go through death agony like land animals.

It was America’s great health scare of the 1970s that drove me into the vegan camp, never again to change my mind. Mother Jones, a popular counterculture magazine, started it all with a frightening article about the genetic re-engineering of chicken: how their genes were altered in the laboratory, chemical feeds developed to stimulate growth and egg-bearing, etc. It was nothing short of an Orwellian scenario of corporate greed and science itself put to perverse ends with dire consequences for the unknowing masses.

The food guru Michael Pollan would later write of giant food industries playing with people’s lives by altering genetic patterns to produce more profitable products, never mind the unacceptable human cost in cancer and deadly diseases. He was (is) an advocate of sensible eating who argues for organic over processed food and for a balanced diet apart from food fads and voodoo dieting. 

No wonder political correctness decreed the wholesale repudiation of all kinds of meat. Only the ignorant poor and the irresponsible rich were supposed to stick to the old steak and potato and cholesterol-defying staples of western cuisine.

Later christened the “Me Decade,” the 1970s marked a retreat from the political activism of the anti-Vietnam years into personal obsession with health and enlightenment. Drugs or habit-forming substances became passé; jogging and yoga were in. Gender politics, meaning women and LGBT rights, would be added to the litany of civil rights for Afro-Americans and other ethnic minorities.

In my case, the first to go was the Filipino craze for pork. No more adobo, apritada or relleno whatsoever. Out went McDonald’s Big Mac. Next on the chopping block was steak, which I never developed a taste for anyway. Down to just chicken and seafood, I slowly lost taste for chicken and dropped it without any second thoughts. It was goodbye to Kentucky Fried Chicken, which we used to pig out on by the bucket.

After letting go of chicken, it was tempting to go all the way and scrap seafood as well. But I consciously drew the line on that. I was not about to deprive myself of everything good to eat. I saw no point in giving up salmon, trout, halibut, shrimps, lobsters, oysters and crabs. Although fish was wholly defensible, shellfish was dubious on calorie and cholesterol levels. But I didn’t care anymore.

While I lived in New York, there was no problem sticking to my personalized, if ambiguous, vegan lifestyle. I could subsist on yogurt and salads. Indian, Chinese and Korean restaurants were everywhere and offered a whole range of soybean-based staples. I became a Japanese sushi and sashimi fanatic. People didn’t raise any fuss when you made your vegan preferences known. It was to each his own with, it must be said, the meat lovers turning defensive and ducking in embarrassment.

The Philippines is something else. Being a vegan is regarded as a hippie affectation or, worse, a joke. Rare are the restaurants that bother to be sensitive to the needs of non-meat eaters. Most parties you go to feature the usual lechon, relleno and beef standards. I always end up with egg omelet or tuna this or that, sometimes straight out of a can on short notice. I often draw unwanted attention to myself and feel I’m some freaky character asking for something weird and capricious.

A patient sense of humor is indispensable if you insist on sticking to your vegan principles. But why all the fuss about something so basically a matter of personal choice and preference? You mean nobody any harm. You’re just being yourself.

Dad and I have reversed roles in a manner of speaking. While he was once my slave driver, I am now his enabler. When we go to a Filipino restaurant like Via Mare or Abe, I know what he wants and I preempt my stepmom’s predictable objections by ordering dinuguan or blood porridge and puto or rice cakes for him. It’s his concession of choice to the meat lobby, never mind if pork innards are the deadliest in the carcinogenic category.

“You must not complain of gout tonight,” his exasperated wife warns Dad who just flashes his knowing life-is-short smile.

I then proceed to order pinakbet, the classic Ilocano vegetable stew. It’s obvious I can’t have enough of the eggpant, okra and ampalaya. Dad can only grin with satisfaction, knowing he initiated me into the perverse love of vegetables. He instinctively knew I would come around. Father knows best.