Life In The Philippines: Food Outside Your Home

They say “lutong-bahay” is the best. True, food cooked in your home is always the best. You decide the flavor and mix and voila!

Sadly, once you are outside your home, the food is different in terms of flavor, serving and price. When you eat at restaurants, fast food or even carenderias, the price does not fit the serving content of the food that you order. Here in the Philippines, food decreases in size at a fast rate.

Issue #1: Price and serving size

Notice the premium sandwich of these well known fast food restaurants:

Jollibee Champ - Better order 2 regular yum sandwiches instead.

KFC’s Zinger - Better order 2 chicken burger sandwiches instead.

McDonald’s Big Mac - Same logic as above.

Oh yeah, these fast food have all degraded the quality of their products. People were lucky to have last experienced their quality food many years ago. Back then, the burgers were huge. The quality of the patty was great. And the price was very ok.

In restaurants, the serving content for any ala carte order is pretty funny. Now, do not get me wrong. This is not a generalization to all restaurants. I am sure there are a few of them that serve food content that is fairly priced. But nowadays, good luck. The best scenario to have your money’s worth when you eat outside is to go buffet. The only exception for this is if you are a group.

This may be economic related, why food served today looks like 3/4 was slashed from many years ago. I am not exaggerating. I can tell especially with fast food because I always eat the same product literally so I know if something becomes different than before.

Because of the serving size that one experiences today when eating in the Philippines, I would say this country is the fine dining capital of the world.

Issue #2: Too much salt or sugar

This is the problem with food in the Philippines. Too much on salt or sugar where the natural ingredient becomes less. Profits, you know …

I am guilty for having loved these kind of foods when I was young. Hell, there was not much to know about back then. But after you have compared this with even street food from other countries, why cannot we have the same here? I am not saying to use the same spices like they do. We have our own natural spices. I prefer natural spices than mostly vetsin or salt laden food.

Yes, we do need salt. But many overuse it to the point where it becomes unhealthy. Same with sugary products. Look at those businesses that sell shakes. The fruit is cute, some fatty milk and then too much sugar. Tasty, right? At least some milktea gives you the option not to include sugar in it. But since sugar is already ingrained into our brains, and the fact that staff does not diligently ask customers about the sugar level all the time, most of the time, people drink milktea with too much sugar.