Serendipitously, last week, I came across an interesting survey that showed what cuisines are popular in 24 countries.

Fortunately, the survey included other cuisines Filipinos take pleasure in besides their own. 

Unsurprisingly, the data from the "Information is Beautiful" website showed Filipinos overwhelmingly, at 97 percent, ranked their own cuisine as their most popular choice.

There is not much to be debated about preferring Filipino food.

Food, after all, provides emotional connections and cheers one's sense of worth, of belonging someplace with its warm, cozy memories of friendships, family ties, and childhood.

Still, knowing what other cuisines charm Filipinos is interesting.

Other cuisines meriting the approval of Filipino palates and appetites were: American (93 percent), Italian and Japanese (both at 90 percent), Chinese (88 percent), Korean (87 percent), Spanish (86 percent), Mexican (85 percent), French (82 percent), Hong Kong (80 percent), Thai (76 percent), Australian (74 percent), Singaporean (72 percent), British (70 percent), Taiwanese (68 percent), Vietnamese (66 percent), Malaysian and Indonesian (65 percent), Caribbean (63 percent), and Turkish (61 percent).

Filipinos also ranked other cuisines, but I've limited this column to Filipinos' top preferences.

Suffice it to note that Filipinos ranked Argentinian, Norwegian, Saudi Arabian, Finnish and Peruvian cuisines at the bottom of their choices.

Anyway, I didn't pompously dismiss the rankings as mere trivial factoids, probably only handy for quiz shows.

Firstly, because I've come to realize that we studiously need to mind what goes into our bellies and guts. "He who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else," said English author Samuel Johnson, a great eater.

Talking about food, then, is not a lowly trivial subject matter.

Many Filipinos, of course, don't think twice about the food on their plate, except probably whether it will quickly satiate their hunger or not.

But while the need to devour something belongs to all animals, the need to have it means something is entirely human.

As wonderful food writer M.F. Fisher once wrote, "Hunger is more than a problem of belly and guts, and that the satisfying of it can and must and does nourish the spirit as well as the body."

Secondly, when one seriously considers the proverb, "You are what you eat," it points out that what Filipinos eat somehow explains who they really are.

Knowing then what Filipinos irresistibly eat with gusto nowadays allows us to come closer to understanding ourselves and our class-stratified society. 

Seriously, it means the idea of food and identity, and the process of choosing and consuming food encompasses psychological, social, economic, cultural, and biological factors, all of which play a role in cultivating the Filipino identity.

As such, sketchily interpreting what other cuisines are popular with Filipinos immediately reveals that the Filipino palate and taste are blends of Western and Asian gastronomies. 

Undoubtedly, that's common knowledge. In fact, when one quizzes present-day Filipinos if they're aware of where their food choices come from, they can quickly answer yes.

Any ordinary Filipino can quickly tell you that spaghetti and pizza are Italian; halo-halo, ramen, and tempura are Japanese; hamburgers, steaks, and ketchup are American; pancit, siopao, and hopia are Chinese; samgyupsal and kimchi are Korean; morcon, ensaimada, and pan de sal are Spanish; croissant is French, and taco is Mexican.

If easily identifying where their food choices come from, testifies to Filipino cosmopolitanism, these foods nonetheless ended up as traditionally Filipino.

What makes them Filipino? The late food historian Doreen G. Fernandez said it's because of "the history and society that introduced them and adapted them; the people who tuned them to their tastes and accepted them into their homes and restaurants, and especially the harmonizing culture that combined them into contemporary Filipino fare."

Harmonizing foreign gastronomic delights essentially means we have a vibrant, adaptive culture of making other foods our very own.

But it also means the same foods are stark reminders of our often-painful colonial history and our present diaspora.