Our political landscape has been a cause of reflection for all of us. Culture is who we are as a people, and should be something we can be proudly using as a cause for positive country branding. But our culture has been overridden by such negative political happenings. So, this article is about how food has somehow become symbolic of where we are today.

Long before scholars wrote dissertations on postcolonial identity, Filipinos were already telling their story through food. From the delight at chorizos of our Spanish cuisine heritage, to the embrace of Spam when the Americans came, to the sushi popularity now forgiving of the Japanese period, and the latest Korean BTS cultural craze that drags samgyupsal along with it! But we have the sapin-sapin. This layered rice cake — violet from ube, yellow gold from langka, white from coconut — has always been our most honest self-portrait. Each layer distinct, each layer proud, yet pressed together into one whole, one flavor, one people. To bite into sapin-sapin is to taste the Malay, the Chinese, the Spanish, the American — all the civilizations that washed upon our shores and left something behind. We did not merely absorb these influences. We stacked them, color by color, and called it ours.

Then there is the halo-halo — and with it, a more exuberant metaphor for what it means to be Filipino. Here is a glass overflowing with contradiction and abundance: sweetened beans beside nata de coco, purple yam ice cream melting into shaved ice, leche flan sinking slowly into a riot of textures. Halo-halo does not apologize for its complexity. It celebrates it. To eat halo-halo is to surrender to the beautiful chaos of a nation that has always found ways to make something joyful out of whatever it was given — hardship, history, heat. It is not a refined dessert. It is a democratic one. Every ingredient insists on being seen, and somehow, together, they work.

For decades, halo-halo felt like the right metaphor. Messy, yes. Imperfect, certainly. But rich — rich with layers, rich with flavor, rich with the promise that beneath the ice there was always something worth digging for. Culture and politics reflected this. Doable and acceptable.

But today (it’s almost tragic when I write this), our politico-culture feels less like halo-halo and more like ice scramble — the poor cousin sold in plastic bags outside school gates. Ice scramble is shaved ice dyed a garish pink, dusted with powdered milk if you are lucky, sweet in a hollow, chemical way. There are no beans. No nata. No real fruit. Just color. Just the performance of sweetness, without any of the substance. Gone are our statements, the intellectuals are a majority, the strategists almost gone. The substance of power in our halls of government are all performances with no substance, majority with egos that only see the power and the next election, the money they can make from the position. The sad dwindling minority are left with so much to carry for the people.