By: Raia Ocampo
In the middle of World War II, the Philippines faced a surge of malnutrition and a peak in food shortages. Amid this struggle, a Filipina war hero named Maria Orosa provided canned goods and preservation techniques to feed the forces.
Born in 1893, Maria Orosa grew up in Batangas watching the Philippine-American War unfold. In her college years, she earned degrees in pharmaceutical chemistry and food chemistry at the University of Washington. She learned about food processing at the same time working in canning factories to fund her studies.
In 1922, Orosa returned home to the country, and became the head for the food preservation division in the Bureau of Science, along with the plant utilization division of Bureau of Plant Industry. During the 1925 Manila Carnival, several booths from the bureau displayed agricultural products, and the first localized canned products. At that time, the country relied on imported and expensive canned goods, often reserved for the upper class. But because of Maria Orosa’s work, she shared the techniques in canning, drying, dehydrating, and fermenting native Filipino fruits and vegetables. From having frozen mangoes to making jellies from guava and santol, onto making powdered calamansi juice, and boxing dried candied fruits.
Serving the Filipino People
Orosa advocated to uplift food security and to use the country’s own natural resources. To achieve this, she visited rural areas in 1929 to teach proper food preparation, poultry-raising, and gardening. Listing down over 700 recipes for nutrition-rich food from common vegetables that Filipinos can find during the war. Teaching how to prepare agar from seaweed, or use peanuts as salad oil. She invented the “palayok oven”, a clay oven that can bake bread and cookies without the need for electricity, used by families in remote areas.
By riding the movement for combatting food scarcity and paving access for education in home economics, Orosa established the Home Extension Service, which was a rural improvement club to organize childcare, meal planning, and handicraft skills for housewives in the barrios.
When Filipinos were taken as prisoners of war, Maria Orosa remained steadfast to stay in her country. While not in the frontline of fighting, she was working behind the scenes in her laboratory, packaging and smuggling food packets to feed soldiers. She joined the Marking’s Guerillas and her invention of “Soyalac”, which was powdered soybean rich in proteins, was considered a miracle food. This was a way that sustained the strength of Filipino forces despite the food disruption during war, along with darak or rice bran that fights beri-beri, a disease due to vitamin B1 deficiencies. Many of Orosa’s published recipes, and most of all, the condiment of banana ketchup, have been commercialized and are now household staples.
Sustaining a Legacy
During the Battle of Manila in 1945, a piece of shrapnel wounded Orosa when a bombing raid occurred. A humanitarian at heart, Maria Orosa, promoted local ingredients and gave back to her country. She was known for saying “When you start an experiment, finish it and write the results for others to use.”
With April being National Filipino Food Month, Maria Orosa is honored as a chemist, war heroine, and humanitarian for pioneering food preservation initiatives and making it accessible to the people.
Culinary historian Felice Prudente Sta. Maria highlights the teachings of Maria Orosa and said that “If we are food literate, we’re not just into how to cook something but also know what it does to our body chemistry, to our emotions, to our mind.”
Maria Orosa’s experiments have reinvented recipes to serve the Filipino people in times of scarcity and shortage and ensure no food goes to waste.
REFERENCES
Arguelles, J. (n.d.). Amazing Filipino Women Heroes - PVAO. Philippine Veterans Affairs Office. https://pvao.gov.ph/pvao-gad-updates/maria-ylagan-orosa/
Grana, R. (2022, April 5). Wartime drinks, rice cookies and the other “ambags” of Maria Orosa, inventor of the banana catsup. ABS-CBN News. https://news.abs-cbn.com/ancx/culture/spotlight/05/08/21/what-maria-orosa-inventor-of-the-banana-catsup-can-teach-us-about-living-smart-in-a-pandemic
Ladrido, R. C. (2022, January 21). Maria Y. Orosa: The idea of public service. VERA Files. https://verafiles.org/articles/maria-y-orosa-idea-public-service
Maria Ylagan Orosa and the Chemistry of Resistance. (2020, July 23). Lady Science. https://www.ladyscience.com/features/maria-ylagan-orosa-chemistry-of-resistance
National Nutrition Council XI. (2020, March). The Filipina Nutrition Heroine: Maria Y. Orosa. National Nutrition Council. https://www.nnc.gov.ph/regional-offices/mindanao/region-xi-davao-region/3644-the-filipina-nutrition-heroine-maria-y-orosa
Nov 9, M. A. L. |, & 2019. (2019, November 9). Maria Orosa: The War Hero Who Invented Banana Ketchup. Esquire. https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/maria-orosa-the-war-hero-who-invented-banana-ketchup-a00293-20191109
Torres, P. (2021, February 11). Maria Ylagan Orosa: Scientist, Hero and Food Inventor. ModernFilipina.ph. https://www.modernfilipina.ph/lifestyle/culture/maria-ylagan-orosa
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