Balut: "Fertilized Duck Eggs and Their Role in Filipino Culture"

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Whoever discovered balut stumbled onto fact that has changing excellences (taste, texture) as it evolves and develops. Thus between egg and full-grown duck, there stages that bear exploring-and eating. And Filipino has explored them and evolved culture of balut. Doreen Fernandez in World of This essay illustrates how consumption of one particular food, fertilized duck eggs, can reveal interplay between food, beliefs, culture and history. Called balut in Philippines or hot vit lon in Vietnam, fertilized duck eggs also familiar in customs of Chinese, Laotians, Cambodians and Thais. Socio-cultural factors, not just nutritional reasons dominate its consumption. Using historical and literary sources, as well as fieldwork data culled from 25 balut eaters, two balut distributors and a duck farmer as well, I will explore what it is about balut that makes eating it desirable. Why ingest something that may already have bones, feathers and a beak? For Filipino and other Asian Americans, there alternative sources of protein, (which is not case for many in Philippines who do not have luxury of choice). Eating is usually a more complicated function than just taking nourishment wrote scholar Kurt Lewin. The complexities involved in eating of balut, or any other for that matter, has since been explored by a number of folklorists and anthropologists. Food scholarship has ranged from as a semiotic system (Theophano 1991; Douglas 1966 & 1972; Weismantel 1988), to how consumption is tied to psychological and economic factors (Lewin 1942; Richards 1932), to way defines ethnicity (Brown and Mussell 1984; Georges 1984; Kalcik 1984). However, much of debate between scholars is between materialists, led by Marvin Harris and Marshall Sahlins, and symbolic theorists such as Mary Douglas and Claude Levi-Strauss. Harris agrees that may have symbolic meaning, but before anything else, must nourish collective stomach before it can feed collective mind and whatever foods eaten, are foods that have a more favorable balance of practical benefits over costs than foods that avoided (bad to eat) (Harris 1985:15). For Douglas, however, embodies a code, and messages in it can be seen in the pattern of social relations (1972:61). Who is being excluded or included can be gleaned from categories and meal patterns; for example, drinks reserved for strangers and acquaintances while meals for intimate friends and family (Douglas 66). In case of balut, both symbolic and material explanations can illuminate reasons why people would eat embryonic duck eggs. Although it is always eaten boiled, and never raw, eating balut requires consumption of something in fetal stage, and psychological, cultural, and socio-economic factors must all be considered. Generally sold late at night or early morning, balut is consumed by Filipino males for its alleged aphrodisiac properties, while women eat it for reasons such as energy and nutrition, but never as a sexual stimulant. As one informant put it bluntly, balut as an aphrodisiac is para lang sa lalaki ito (it is just for men). Eaten usually as a snack, and not a formal food, fertilized duck eggs have been described to be as popular in Manila as hotdogs in United States (Maness 1950:10). Although at one point, balut may have been prevalent only in Luzon region, and not in other areas of Philippines, it has been hailed country's national street food (Fernandez 1994:11). Balut is so deeply embedded in Philippine culture that it has inspired everything from a hit record song about distinctive howling calls of balut vendors in late night and early morning to dishes in Filipino haute cuisine. Indeed, love affair of Filipinos with fertilized duck eggs has been carried by immigrants to United States. …