Pagpag facts for kids
Pagpag is a Tagalog word for leftover food. This food usually comes from restaurants, especially fast food places. People find it by looking through garbage sites and dumps. Pagpag can also be expired frozen meat, fish, or vegetables. These are thrown away by supermarkets and found in garbage trucks.
The word "pagpag" in Tagalog means "to shake off the dust or dirt." It describes how people clean the food they find. Pagpag can be eaten right away or cooked in different ways.
Eating pagpag started because of serious hunger from extreme poverty in the Philippines. Selling pagpag became a way for poor people to earn money. Pagpag is also called batchoy. This name comes from a Filipino soup dish. Sometimes, pagpag is cooked like fried batchoy. People who look for this leftover food are called mambabatchoy.
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How Pagpag is Prepared
After finding pagpag, people first remove dirt and things that cannot be eaten. Then, the food can be eaten right there. Or, it can be cooked more, often by frying it in hot oil. This depends on the type of food.
A Filipino politician and actor named Isko Moreno used to find leftover food. He would call it pagpag batsoy after frying it. Small businesses have grown around pagpag. People who are struggling financially collect, clean, and sell this food to others who need it. A cook in a restaurant in Tondo, Manila, even prepares pagpag in traditional Filipino cooking styles. For example, they might make pagpag like kaldereta or adobo. They often use leftover chicken from places like Jollibee and KFC.
Efforts to Stop Pagpag Food
Hunger is closely linked to the spread of pagpag food. The food crisis in 2008 was a big reason for more poverty in the Philippines. The National Statistical Coordination Board suggested that President Benigno Aquino III's government should work to reduce poverty.
Department of Social Welfare and Development Secretary Dinky Soliman said the government was helping poor people. They did this through feeding programs and giving money to families who met certain conditions. In 2014, a survey showed that hunger in the Philippines went down. However, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines-Nagkaisa thought this was partly because pagpag was becoming more common.
Using a "Zero waste" approach is seen as a good way to stop pagpag food from spreading. This means trying to create no waste at all.
Pagpag in the Media
The serious hunger in the Philippines, including pagpag, has been shown in many TV documentaries. In 2003, a show called I-Witness on GMA Network had an episode named "Basurero" (garbage collector). It told the story of poor people collecting leftovers from fast food trash. The people who looked for food in the trash were called magbabatchoy.
In 2006, another documentary show, Probe, on ABS-CBN also featured pagpag. It talked about the health risks of eating this kind of food.
After CNN reported on pagpag in 2012, the world learned more about hunger problems in the Philippines. The San Diego Tribune also wrote an article about people in Payatas preparing pagpag. They did this to celebrate Pope Francis's visit to the Philippines. In February 2018, BBC News released a short documentary. It showed how pagpag is made, following meat from a rubbish dump to a dinner table.
Other Meanings of the Word
In everyday use, pagpag means to shake off dust or dirt. Pagpag is also a Filipino term for a superstition. It says you should not go straight home after a funeral. You must do the "pagpag" first. This practice is done to stop the soul of the dead person from following you home after visiting the wake.
