Filipino Immigrants and Hypertension
Maliah Stillson
San José State University
PH 135, Section 4
Dr. Andrew Carter
December 7,
... [Show More] 2020
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Introduction
Food culture in the Philippines is a big deal; for example, it is a way for individuals to
express themselves. The Filipino culture uses various spices, herbs, colors, and rich flavors in
their dishes. Most Filipino dishes often have a bold mixture of sweet, sour, and salty flavors. The
cuisines in the Philippines today are continuing to evolve because of the influences of new
techniques, styles, and products from other countries. It is common in traditional Filipino culture
to gather with family and friends to have a feast while enjoying some singing and dancing.
Typically these feasts only occur on special celebrations, such as birthdays, holidays, and even
family reunions. They consist of various foods that are high in fat, as they are oily, fried, and
salty. Filipinos love to eat food, especially snacking between each meal of the day, but
sometimes the foods being eaten can have adverse effects on the body. A person who continues
to eat these types of foods on a daily basis can develop severe or even chronic illnesses such as
hypertension or obesity. This paper will discuss the cultural group I identify with, the health
disparity, what factors influence it, and public health initiatives that will have been implemented
for the health disparity.
Background of Culture
My relationship with this culture is that my mother’s side of the family, both her mother
and father were born in the Philippines. When my grandmother was a young girl in the
Philippines, she remembers how different the food she ate there was compared to when she first
came to the United States by boat in the late 1950s. Growing up, my grandmother's mother
would cook traditional Filipino food because that is all they could afford at the time. In
comparison, I did not grow up in a traditional Filipino household like she did since I am of
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mixed ethnicity, Filipino, and White. As a child, my grandmother would always cook traditional
Filipino dishes whenever we visited her. The Philippines is an island located Southeast of China
and North of Indonesia. In the 1500s, the Philippines was named after King Philip II of Spain
after Ferdinand Magellan discovered the country (History of the Philippines, 2015). When the
Philippines was under Spanish rule, the Filipino people wanted to find a way out of the country.
About three hundred years later, in the 1800s, the Spanish culture started to take over in the
Philippines, and many did not like that it was happening (History of the Philippines, 2015). The
Filipino people began to fight for their own independence and wanted to be separated from [Show Less]