Day 48 Dalaguete, Cebu #DPC Intradermal skin injection

A slow night in the ER tonight. A patient came in around 2:00AM. I performed an intradermal skin injection and the patient was admitted. Other than that, no one else came during my shift. 

Since I don't have much to say about working the floor tonight, I want to talk a little bit about the importance of rice here. I know that, if you're American, you might have heard that rice is the Asian equivalent of the potato. The only problem with that comparison is it doesn't even come close to describe how important rice is. To give you an example of how important rice is here, all you have to do is look at the language.

The word for food/eat in Bisaya is: kaon.
The word for rice in Bisaya is: kaNon.

The only difference between the word food and rice is a single consonant. In colloquial speech, the word for rice can be used to mean food -- instead of using kaon, kanon can be be used.

The word sudan roughly translates to: partner with rice. It describes the food you're going to eat with rice. At first, this word doesn't seem to describe how important rice is. It's only after you think about it that it dawns on you. The word sudan implies that rice is already going to be eaten. The fact that there's a word here that, by definition, means food secondary to rice illustrates how engrained rice is in the culture.

Rice is eaten with every meal. Sometimes rice is the meal. As long as someone has rice, they at least have something to eat. It's on every table weather you're poor or rich. It's eaten with every meal. It's on every menu (even the McDonalds here has rice on the menu). It's on every plate.

From a health perspective, this aspect of the culture is important because the genesis of a majority of health problems can be traced to rice. White rice, to be exact. All the empty carbohydrates from white rice lead to weight problems and diabetes.

The simple solution: stop eating rice.
The reality: rice is part of the culture.

Asking a Filipino to stop eating rice is the same as asking them to stop drinking water. It's the same as asking them to deny a part of their culture.


This type of dilemma is when the scientific aspect of medicine must come secondary to the human aspect. Scientifically, reducing the intake of empty carbohydrates is healthy. From a humanities standpoint, asking someone to deny their culture is inhumane. At what point is living worth more than their quality of life?