The Filipino “Balut” Egg as a Taboo & Exotic Food
“To eat Balut is to confront death, one that hasn’t been prettied up for our delicate sensibilities” (Tracey Paska)
Throughout history, civilizations have utilized various objects, actions and images to assist us in helping to understand the world we live in. These representations have helped make sense of our communal experiences by providing understandable meanings and symbols that can be shared among individuals, groups and cultures. Food and the act of eating can be especially powerful symbols because they are so entrenched in our everyday life and require the use of all of our senses. What, where and how we eat says a lot about who we are as individuals and groups while also fulfilling our physical, emotional and psychological needs. Food has the ability to be symbolic in all efforts relating to obtaining and preparing it while also being used to instill national, regional and ethnic identity and pride as a form of “banal nationalism”. “Food is one of the mundane reminders that helps keep national identity “near the surface of daily life” so that people don’t forget their nationality” (Palmer 1998:192-Sutton). Sometimes a food item can be used to separate one group from another; demonstrating a groups greater or lesser worth in the opinions of outsiders. Religion and culture can be powerful influences on these foods, representing a particular groups value system or worldview; they may be seen as inedible or unpalatable or considered taboo and elicit disgust and avoidance. One such food item that has garnered particular interest in the Philippines and in the United States, both as a symbol of cultural tradition and also as a repulsive act of consumption is the balut egg.
Around the world and since the beginning of time, the humble egg has signified the idea of rebirth and rejuvenation in the circle of life, demonstrated in its shape with neither
beginning or end. Ancient civilizations in Egypt, India, Greece and Phoenicia used the egg as a symbol in their beliefs about the creation of the universe and the origin of the world. To early humans, the visual evidence of a new creation emerging from within a shell, so different from their own reproduction, must have seemed strange and miraculous. “Their (eggs) magic is also in some ways inseparable from the beauty and mystery of the birds that produce them – creatures that soar to the heavens and were once widely viewed as instruments and even personifications of the gods.” (Chadd, 2016). The egg brings hope and purity and has long been associated with fertility, sexuality, and reproduction while being instilled with all sorts of magical, protective and divine qualities and hidden secrets. Many religious and spiritual beliefs commonly recognize the egg as a powerful taboo within many cultures; prohibiting the consumption of eggs by pregnant women, for fear of a loss of fertility if eaten as life lives in the egg. In the Jewish faith, the egg has become a symbol of sacrifice and mourners eat them after a funeral to signify loss. Eggs have particular resonance in the Christian faith, associated with Easter, eternal life and the resurrection of Jesus.
The Republic of the Philippines is an archipelago made up of over 7,000 islands and comprised of many regions, various languages and dialects. A deeply religious and superstitious nation and the only predominantly Roman Catholic country in Asia, its foodways can be seen as the culinary description of the country’s history. Regionality plays a large role in Filipino cooking as it’s a geographically diverse country populated by dozens of ethnic groups. Colonialism has shaped much of its recent history with more than 300 years of Spanish rule before the United States took control after the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and until it became an independent republic in 1946. In reaction to the legacy of colonial rule, specific food items and practices such as balut were often used as symbols to help support communal and national identity construction. These food habits provided an outlet for Filipinos to express who and what they were to themselves and “others” while also helping to mark the boundaries of their culture; both within their nation and throughout the world.
It’s believed that Chinese traders and immigrants brought the idea of eating fertilized duck eggs to the Philippines in the 19th century after inadvertently discovering the process. While attempting to hatch duck eggs using hot charcoal, the eggs were accidentally overheated and those that had embryos were cooked by the heat. The liquids in the egg, rather than solidifying, turned into a sort of broth that then simmered the fetus and the yolk, similar to making a soup within the egg itself. In Tagalog the term balut, meaning “to be wrapped up”, refers to the way it is held during the incubation period and “balut sa puti” meaning “wrapped in white”, refers to the ideal 17 to 18-day balut which is still wrapped with a whiteish covering and has not fully developed. The longer the egg incubates, the more pronounced the features of the duck fetus become with defined bones and beaks. Alternative forms include the less developed “mamatong” in which the embryo floats on top of the white and yolk or the tamer version, “penoy”, an unfertilized duck egg which lacks the semi-developed chick. (Giardina, 2019, Calderon, 2014).
Balut is commonly seen as the most famous and exotic delicacy of the Philippines. Although its popularity extends throughout much of Southeast Asia, it is primarily known as the Filipino national street food, as common as the hotdog is to America. It’s frequently eaten as a cheap and affordable snack rather than as a formal food; consumed immediately after purchasing thereby creating a street food experience as close to “authentic” as possible. To eat a balut, one gives the egg a few quick taps with a spoon until it cracks open, the shell is removed and one dashes a mixture of salt, vinegar, soy sauce or chiles into the inner broth. The “soup” is then sipped to reveal the separate yolk and duck which are immediately eaten; the crunching sound coming from the beak and the bones. The whole process takes less than a minute for an expert. Balut is often consumed by Filipino males for its alleged aphrodisiac properties or as a hangover cure, while women consume it for energy and nutrition but never as a sexual stimulant. Its seen as a restorative and curative food for pregnant women to help them stay healthy throughout their pregnancy. (Magat, 2002). It’s even recommended with beer after donating blood to restore strength.
Today, Filipinos are decidedly split over the consumption of balut and its symbol of national identity. Some now view it as a repulsive and disgusting food taboo; as its readily identifiable as a dead animal…it’s still recognizable. “The head, the eyes, everything is still there and you compound it with the idea that it’s a baby. There’s a ton of guilt going into eating balut.” (Lin, Paska, 2016). Where must one draw the line between sustenance and the social organization of cruelty? Food taboos are found throughout human societies based on cultural, social and religious prohibitions and are most often associated with the meat of a particular animal. “That which is most highly prized, most sacred, can, by virtue of its power be the most defiling. Eating meat involves the literal incorporation of animal flesh and this power centers around the qualities of strength, aggression, passion, sexuality. Tearing at raw flesh with one’s teeth is an image of horror, suitable to monsters and the semi-human. It is an image of the bestial, as indeed in the narrow sense it is properly so, for animals do capture, tear at and devour their prey, sometimes half alive” (Twigg, 1983). Although it is eaten boiled and never raw, balut requires the consumption of something in the fetal stage. Structuralists would classify it as raw because of its binary opposition; its existence between life, as the symbol of an egg and death because of its feathers and bones. This can elicit an innate and powerful disgust response or warning sign which initially helped keep humans away from rotting foods and contagious disease. The most common universal disgusts are those that are closely linked to food, however that which is classified as deviant varies greatly from culture to culture and what may be declared unfit by one group may be perfectly acceptable to another. Although the avoidance of a potential food does not imply a taboo, this aversion can turn into habit and eventually develop into one. Our society and culture will often regulate and adjust our disgust response and what we come to be disgusted by, while repeated exposure to something can unconsciously have the effect of decreasing our feeling of disgust towards it (Rozin,1997). The groups that are most likely to elicit disgust are often found in the lowest ranks of the social hierarchy and balut consumption is often attributed to the members of the lower economic level of society as a working-class snack and a poor man’s meal.
In conclusion, eggs have religiously and spiritually been seen as symbols of life and reproduction. In the Philippines, however, the consumption of the fertilized duck egg questions the relationship between food, beliefs, culture and history. Eating balut is based not just on nutritional reasons, but dominated by socio-cultural and economic factors, which shape the way food defines ethnicity. While materialists may argue that foods can hold symbolic meanings; they must first feed our bodies before they can feed our minds. Structuralists on the other hand would claim that food embodies a code and the messages found can define an individual’s place within a society and that taboos can distinguish believers from non-believers. For Filipinos living abroad, balut is eaten to mark an imagined bond to the homeland and helps to reaffirm nationalist sentiments while also strengthening the collective identity with other Filipinos; affirming one’s status as an “insider”. For non-Filipinos, eating balut becomes a way to prove that one is a “foodie”, a form of cultural food colonialism in which one seeks the most exotic foods to consume from foreign countries without understanding the historical context. A majority of people outside of Southeast Asia still recognize balut as a strange and taboo food not simply eaten for enjoyment but for sport. What’s truly shocking though, is how difficult it is for many of us to be reminded of what we’re actually eating.
“In the modern Western industrial food system, life is often cellophaned away as muscle meat that cannot be put back together into the animal, while balut stands as a polar opposite, an unambiguous fetal life-form that we have to crunch through beaks and proto-feathers of a baby bird to savor” (Krishnendu Ray).
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