INACCURATE documentation of heritage dishes can distort culinary history and erase regional distinctions, food historians and cultural advocates warned, calling for rigorous research and verification in publications on Filipino food.
Guillermo “Ige” Ramos, a Thomasian food scholar and founder of the Ugnayan Center for Filipino Gastronomy, said relying on “generic recipes” without proper research may contribute to cultural erasure.
“Inaccurate data becomes ‘fact’ once printed in a book, misleading future researchers and the public,” Ramos told the Varsitarian.
He said documenting food heritage goes beyond recording ingredients and cooking methods and should also examine geography, community-specific technologies and oral histories surrounding a dish.
Fernando Zialcita, professor emeritus at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of Ateneo de Manila University, warned that inaccurate documentation could homogenize regional flavors.
He cited differences between Ilocano pakbet and the Tagalog version of pinakbet, particularly in their cooking methods, ingredients and flavor profiles.
Zialcita said traditional Ilocano pakbet uses a water-based cooking method and a distinctly bitter variety of ampalaya, while the Tagalog version uses fat or oil.
For cultural journalist and documentarian Roberto Villarcabral, documenting regional variations in recipes is itself a form of cultural preservation.
“Food writing is, at its core, investigative journalism. It requires the same discipline as any other beat (a topic a reporter covers in journalism),” he said.
Villarcabral said understanding why a particular ingredient is used in one province but not another, or why a dish has different names across locations, helps preserve the cultural identity of communities.
“If we flatten these distinctions, we erase the reasons behind a dish and reduce a living piece of history to a generic souvenir,” he said.
He added that misrepresenting food in literature could amount to historical erasure and marginalize the practitioners who sustain culinary traditions.
Toronto-based travel and food writer Natasha Alli stressed the importance of obtaining information from primary sources, particularly families that have preserved heritage dishes across generations, as part of fact-checking and verification.
She described traveling to communities where culinary traditions originated as “irreplaceable.”
“In the Philippine context, this means finding the right connections, building relationships with the people [or] communities who can connect you with the [information] you need,” Alli told the Varsitarian.
Harold Bernardo Bueno, president and spokesperson of Slow Food Manila, urged food writers to conduct extensive interviews with practitioners and communities to identify recurring culinary practices and trace how they evolve over time.
“You can interview several artisanal makers who [are] doing that specific ingredient or that specific dish,” he said.
Bueno cautioned against declaring a single version of a dish as definitively authentic, particularly in the Philippines where recipes vary across regions.
Role of academic institutions
Ramos described academic institutions as “primary gatekeepers” of quality cultural publications.
He urged universities to require peer review and rigorous research methods, particularly for government-funded cultural publications.
“Documentation is a form of power; when it is done poorly, it does more harm than having no documentation at all,” Ramos said.
Alli, who served as research and engagement coordinator for the Culinary Tourism Alliance, said academic institutions are the first line of defense in producing quality food reporting and research.
“Works produced [or] supported by the academe carry their weight and will always be regarded as a trusted source,” she said.
Bueno also emphasized the role of food education in preserving heirloom ingredients.
He recalled seeing edible wild plants growing in urban areas of Sampaloc and reflected on how some indigenous food sources can thrive with minimal intervention.
Bueno said Slow Food Manila is working to document indigenous ingredients found in Metro Manila and preserve them through an online archive called “Slow Food Archive Taste.”
Among the ingredients identified by the group is palapat, an indigenous souring agent used in Valenzuela, Bueno said.
Slow Food Manila is the local chapter of the global Slow Food Movement, which promotes Philippine culinary heritage, urban gardening and sustainable local ingredients.
Villarcabral, founder of the Histolinarya Collective, said universities can help move food studies beyond lifestyle content and into history, sociology and anthropology. Charlize Ann D. Lavastida
