Filipinos Celebrating Christmas Should Be Careful With Their Health Habits This Holiday Season Especially With COVID-19 Still Going On

Christmas is just around the corner especially it's nearly the end of November, right? I remembered the excitement associated with Christmas because of gifts and parties. Party time meant serving a lot of delicious food. Though, with my recent health-conscious self - I've started to be careful about party food. A lot of foods during the Christmas season (for those who celebrate it) are lechon, leche flan, and a lot of high cholesterol foods tend to be served. On occasion, these foods aren't bad. I tend to have lechon on occasion such as parties though I started avoiding pork as much as possible for health reasons. Pork is rather high in cholesterol and it's much more difficult to prepare than beef or chicken. Besides, there are some healthy alternatives such as turkey bacon, and chicken hotdogs.

It seems to be the norm in the Philippines to have the fiesta mentality. I remembered spending the first 13 years of my life living downtown. It was so annoying to have neighbors who, in spite of their lower-income status, would party lavishly. December 24 and January 31 were the red flags to watch out for. I could remember how the party would bring in a lot of unhealthy food. Lechon was the star of the show. I'm not surprised that lechon is a national dish or even the national dish of the Philippines. They had a rather noisy party. What got worse is that they were having a lot of LIQUOR and SOFT DRINKS - both of which I try to avoid for health reasons. I do drink soft drinks but I've grown accustomed to drinking tea or fruit juice instead to wash off the greasy feeling from my mouth. They would drink a lot of liquor and soft drinks by the tons. The noise of the party is aggravated when people get drunk - which may also explain the firecracker accidents during the new year. Some people are too drunk to even follow the guidelines regarding the firecrackers.

I did a Google search on "Filipino poor diet" and "Filipino food high cholesterol" and I'm not surprised at the results that I saw. I remembered the poor diet habits of some Filipinos I grew up with. A professor of mine in college mentioned a lot of Filipinos are heavy soft drink drinkers. Another observation I made was having banana-q coated in sugar drank with soft drinks. Some people order their milk tea with EXTRA sugar. You may notice that some occasions tend to serve more junk desserts than fresh fruits. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be serving junk desserts - we need to have more fresh fruit. The Department of Health (DOH) also documented that poor diet, failing food systems, and a lack of physical exercise is a real problem among children. A lot of Filipinos are even getting fat too. Rappler documented that a survey says 67% of Filipinos move less. I decided to quote on Rappler just in case I've got some Pinklawan readers here who think I'm still a DDS when I'm not obligated to be either DDS or Dilawan. It should be a REAL call for concern because being overly fat is NOT healthy. Even worse, a lot of people gain a lot of weight during the holidays to the point of UNHEALTHY LEVELS. Obesity combined with stress and unhealthy eating habits is really a disastrous combination.

This would mean RETHINKING the way Christmas and New Year parties should be done. It would be very important to avoid excessive supplies of liquor and soft drinks. Excess alcohol will ruin the liver (it's better to avoid hard liquor altogether) and soft drinks is a leading cause of obesity and diabetes. It would be good to actually have more vegetables and fresh fruits served during parties too. A good example is to add more vegetables to the pochero. It would also be necessary not to have too much meat since it's better to have more glow foods (fruits and vegetables) than grow foods. A healthy alternative to soft drinks is fresh fruit juice and some cold tea. Also, it would be best to avoid overeating and not to party until morning. This also means avoiding firecrackers because they might end up sending people to the ICU or damage property. 

It's time for a lot of Filipinos to rethink their priorities. True, democracy is a wonderful thing. However, what Filipinos need for than democracy is discipline. Singapore is a democratic country that manages to maintain itself through a culture of discipline. If you want to have a Philippines like Singapore - it would mean accepting Singapore's style of strict governance under a parliamentary system and open to foreign investments. This Christmas, think would you want to follow rules and enjoy the holidays or disobey them at your own risk?