I got a call from my mom, asking for me to stop in and visit dad. I’ve noticed that he’s been shrinking in stature but now I’ve been told, he’s been losing weight. I blame this on mom’s own desire to slim down. While not morbidly obese nor drastically over her ideal weight, she has this unrelenting obsession to lose weight. Oblivious to the fact that men and women differ in the way they metabolize food, she insists on this diet-as-lifestyle regimen going so far as to seek out organic foods; this coming from a woman who handled DDT on her family’s plantation as a little girl.

Strangely enough, despite growing up in hard times in the boondocks, mom is consciously chooses to not partake in the abundance of the first world; rather gleaning off of its surplus. Discounted meats from shops or stalls that can’t shift them, odd lots of produce that would otherwise be thrown into compost heaps, scraps from the fishmonger dismissed by customers who only want clean fillets or headless/tail-less “whole” fish – all are perfectly serviceable foodstuffs.

This abject parsimoniousness can be quite brutal, and I assure you Snuffy can attest to those habits that I’ve picked up, but it’s all good food. The problem is, that my mother takes it to such an extreme, that poor dad is wasting away. I worry that dad sees this weight loss as welcomed and encouraged.

I guess I have to go over to their house with a case of San Miguel and a crate of balut to put an end to all of this.