Rice and Fall

This post came from our Microeconomics blog project

Unlike the Chinese who consider rice as a dish to be eaten right after the main course and is often considered as a dessert, the average Filipino eats every main dish together with rice. A meal would not be considered a complete one without rice.
In fastfood chains such as McDonald’s, Jollibee and KFC, fried chicken and other viands are served with rice here in the Philippines . Meanwhile, fried chicken in other countries are served as it is or with other side orders like potatoes. This does not come as a surprise considering the Philippines is the eighth top rice consumer as it consumes 9.7 million metric tons of rice in the years 2003-2004.

In recent years, rice shortage is becoming more and more imminent and it is taking its toll right now. Due to the rice crisis, prices are increasing and the less privileged citizens of the nation are lessening their rice consumption. The demand for rice in the Philippines is very high. Even though the prices are high, people still buy it. In order to help the people, the Philippine government started selling rice at cheaper prices in military camps.
In western countries, the rice crisis does not affect them as much as it does the eastern countries. This is mainly due to the fact that the people in the west are willing to eat potatoes and other side orders such as salad and pasta instead of rice. Thus, they are willing to substitute rice in favor of other side orders. For them, it is just similar to rice.
However, the type of food in Asian countries like that of our country has rice as the only side order that is edible with the way the viand is cooked. An example of this is pork barbecue and rice. The taste of pork barbecue and rice will not be the same if pork barbecue will be eaten with Caesar salad.

Taking into account the fact that the cost of making or buying the aforementioned side orders would also be too expensive for the average Filipino, the more they would prefer rice over any other side order. In addition to that, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines has advised the Filipino people to start eating camote or corn instead of rice. Considering camote and corn is cheaper than the aforementioned side orders, it still is not being followed by Filipinos because rice is irreplaceable to most of them. For most of them, camote and corn have its own “use” and would taste differently if paired up with a viand. Thus, it is hard to substitute or replace rice. If it would be replaced by either camote, corn or potatoes, the rate at which it could be replaced would be low.