Packaged Plants: Seductive Supplements and Metabolic Precarity in the Philippines

A tight ethnographic focus on the popularity and impact of overly processed plant-based foods and supplements in the Philippines.

Through meticulous research and insightful analysis, Packaged Plants explores the intersectionality between health, economics, and environment in the Philippines, offering an absorbing ethnography and cultural history of how the production and consumption of plants for food and medicine have changed as well as how ultra-processed foods have become linked to health concerns, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity.

Part one of the book presents a comprehensive analysis scrutinizing the colonial influences, urbanization, nutritional policies, research programs, and neoliberal marketing strategies in the Philippines that have proliferated packaged plant-based products as food and medicines. Part two interweaves contemporary urban political ecology frameworks with medical anthropological perspectives within Puerto Princesa and elucidates the precarious circumstances compelling individuals to invest in supplements.

Anita Hardon is chair of the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation group at Wageningen University. Michael Lim Tan is professor emeritus and former chancellor of the University of the Philippines Diliman.