Pagkain, Pag-asa, at Pakikibaka: A Critical Culinary Ethnographic Inquiry on Mung Beans as Sustainable Food Solution

Abstract

Understanding food security means not just whether food is available, but whether it is accessible, nourishing, culturally rooted, and fairly produced, which means recognizing that hunger is not always the absence of food, but the presence of systemic neglect. In the quiet kitchens of Tabaco, Albay, mothers stir steaming pots of munggo— feeding not just their children but entire histories of care, adaptation, and survival. What begins as a simple, affordable meal reveals itself to be a deeper act of resistance against hunger, poverty, and a food system that marginalizes the rural poor. This thesis traces the journey of mung beans, not just a protein source or crop, but as a cultural and political symbol embedded in everyday life: a thread that connects climate-resilient agriculture, maternal labor, and the failures and hopes of public nutrition programs. Through ethnographic immersion and community narratives, munggo emerges as both nourishment and meaning, stretched to fill plates, rotated to renew soil, and prepared in rituals of care. Yet despite its promise, munggo remains marginal in policy, burdened by procurement rules, social stigma, and a development lens that favors the imported over the indigenous. What we eat, and how we share it, is deeply entangled with politics, memory, and survival, where even the humblest crop becomes a quiet force for dignity, sovereignty, and transformation.