Calamansi is more common here. Use more garlic and ginger.
In the kitchens where Filipino families have long measured love through the depth of a dish's saltiness, a quiet reckoning is underway. Dr. Mary Christine Castro, speaking during National Kidney Month at St. Luke's Medical Center, offered not a prohibition but a reorientation — toward calamansi, garlic, and herbs as the true carriers of flavor, and away from the sodium-laden staples that have quietly accumulated their toll on kidneys across generations. Her message belongs to a longer human story about how culture encodes habit, and how habit, once seen clearly, can be gently redirected without losing what made it meaningful.
- Kidney disease risk is rising in the Philippines, and the culprit is hiding in plain sight — in the fish sauce, soy sauce, and seasoning packets that define everyday Filipino cooking.
- The urgency sharpens around children: a child aged four to six should consume only half the sodium an adult can tolerate, meaning families with young children are already in the middle of a health decision they may not know they are making.
- Castro's intervention cuts through the usual nutrition advice by naming what people actually cook with and offering direct, affordable substitutes — calamansi, garlic, ginger, lemongrass — that Filipinos already know and grow.
- A practical technique — soaking and rinsing dried fish before cooking — shows how traditional staples can be preserved in spirit while their sodium load is quietly reduced.
- The resolution being navigated is not purely personal: Castro calls on both households and the food industry to act, framing sodium reduction as a shared responsibility rather than a private discipline.
Dr. Mary Christine Castro took the stage at St. Luke's Medical Center during National Kidney Month with something more useful than alarm — she brought a direction. The forum, Iwas Sakit, Iwas Alat, gathered health professionals and families around a problem embedded in Filipino culinary identity: the deep, habitual reliance on salt, soy sauce, fish sauce, and commercial seasoning mixes that make Filipino food taste the way it does, and that quietly accumulate damage in the kidneys over time.
Castro's answer was not deprivation. It was substitution — calamansi, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, oregano, basil. These are not foreign ingredients. They are already in Filipino homes and gardens. What she was asking was that people reach for them first, before the salt shaker, before the patis bottle. She acknowledged the difficulty honestly: the taste of high sodium is familiar, the habit is old, and reducing it feels like losing something. But she insisted the switch is possible, and that natural seasonings can carry flavor just as well.
She also pressed beyond the kitchen. Grocery store labels matter, she said, and so do the decisions food companies make about how much sodium goes into their products. The right to health, in her framing, includes access to food that does not slowly harm the body — and that is not something individual families can secure alone.
One of her most pointed observations concerned children. A child aged four to six should consume only half the sodium an adult can tolerate. This means that in households with young children, the salt conversation is not abstract — it is immediate and consequential. Castro urged families to discuss sodium intake deliberately, as they would any other matter of household wellbeing.
She also offered a concrete technique: soaking and rinsing dried fish before cooking reduces sodium while preserving flavor and nutrition. It is a small adjustment, not a ban on tradition — and it points toward the larger spirit of her message. The path forward is not away from Filipino food, but through it, with more attention and a few well-chosen substitutions.
Dr. Mary Christine Castro stood before a room of health professionals and concerned citizens at St. Luke's Medical Center, speaking plainly about a problem that touches nearly every Filipino kitchen: salt. It was National Kidney Month, and the forum—called Iwas Sakit, Iwas Alat—had drawn people who understood that what we cook with and how we cook it shapes whether our kidneys stay healthy or fail. Castro, executive director of the Nutrition Center of the Philippines, had come to offer something more useful than warnings. She had recipes for change.
The core of her message was simple enough to act on tonight: calamansi, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, oregano, basil. These are not exotic imports or expensive supplements. They are things Filipinos already know, already grow, already reach for. What Castro was asking was that people reach for them instead of the salt shaker, instead of the fish sauce bottle, instead of the seasoning packets that have become so ordinary in Filipino cooking that their sodium content barely registers as a choice anymore. The problem, she explained, is that soy sauce, patis, gravy, and commercial seasoning mixes are woven so deeply into the way Filipino food tastes that reducing them feels like losing something essential. But it is not. It is trading one kind of flavor for another.
In her conversation with the Daily Tribune, Castro pressed on this point with the precision of someone who has watched people struggle with dietary change. She acknowledged what many nutritionists gloss over: Filipinos are accustomed to high sodium. The taste is familiar. The habit is old. But she insisted, with the calm certainty of someone who has seen it work, that the switch is possible. Garlic, onion, calamansi—these can do the work salt does. They can make food taste like food. The shift does not require deprivation. It requires attention.
What made her advice distinctive was that she did not stop at individual choice. She spoke about the sodium hiding in products on grocery store shelves, urging people to read labels and choose lower-sodium options when they could find them. She called on the public to support broader efforts to reduce sodium in the foods that companies manufacture and sell. This was not just about what happens in home kitchens. It was about what the food industry decides to put in its products, and whether the right to health means access to food that does not slowly damage the body.
Castro also surfaced something that often gets lost in nutrition advice: children are not small adults. A child aged four to six should consume only half the sodium that an adult can tolerate. A child aged seven to ten should have three-fourths. This means that if a household has children, the conversation about salt is not abstract. It is immediate. It is about whether a five-year-old is being seasoned toward kidney disease before they can read. Castro urged families to have this conversation explicitly—to talk about sodium intake the way they might talk about homework or bedtime, as something that matters enough to discuss and decide together.
One detail Castro shared suggested how practical this work could become. In a community-based nutrition program, residents had been taught to soak and rinse dried fish before cooking. Dried fish—patis, tuyo—are staples in Filipino meals, especially in households with less money. They are also loaded with sodium. But soaking and rinsing them reduces that sodium while keeping the flavor and the nutrition intact. This is not a ban on traditional food. It is a technique, a small adjustment that preserves what people love while protecting what they need.
The larger question Castro's work raises is whether the burden of kidney health should rest entirely on individual families making better choices in their kitchens, or whether it should also rest on the companies that decide how much salt goes into the food they sell. She seemed to believe both things are true—that households need to change, and that the food industry needs to change too. The conversation about sodium in the Philippines is just beginning. What Castro has offered is not a solution but a direction: toward calamansi, toward herbs, toward a way of cooking that does not require sacrificing flavor to protect the body.
Notable Quotes
We Filipinos are accustomed to having high sodium in our diet, but we can reduce it or replace it with healthier alternatives by using other herbs and spices.— Dr. Mary Christine Castro, Nutrition Center of the Philippines
When we have children in the household, we should be more conscious about the use of salt at home.— Dr. Mary Christine Castro
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does salt taste so good to us? Why is it so hard to let go of?
Salt is not just flavor—it is memory. In Filipino cooking especially, it is how food has tasted for generations. Patis, soy sauce, these are not optional seasonings. They are the foundation. When someone tells you to use less, they are asking you to cook differently than your mother did. That is harder than it sounds.
But Castro is saying the alternatives are already there. Calamansi, garlic, ginger. These are not foreign things.
Exactly. She is not asking people to abandon Filipino food. She is asking them to notice what they already have. The problem is that salt has become invisible. People do not think about it. They just reach for it. Castro is trying to make it visible again—to say, this is a choice you are making, and here are other choices.
What about the children she mentioned? Why does that matter so much?
Because a child's body is still forming. If a four-year-old is eating the same sodium load as an adult, the damage starts early. And it is often invisible. By the time someone realizes their kidneys are failing, years of high sodium have already done the work. Castro is saying: if you have children, this is not just about their taste buds. It is about their future.
She also talked about soaking dried fish. That seems like a small thing.
It is small, but it is not nothing. Tuyo and patis are cheap protein for families that cannot afford much else. If you tell them to stop eating it, you are asking them to eat less. But if you teach them to soak it first, you are saying: keep eating what you have always eaten, just do it differently. That is the difference between advice that works and advice that does not.
What about the food companies? Is she really expecting them to voluntarily reduce sodium?
She is calling for it, but she knows it will not happen without pressure. Companies put salt in food because it is cheap, it preserves things, and it makes people want to buy more. Changing that requires either regulation or enough consumers demanding it. She is trying to build that demand from the ground up—in kitchens, in families, in conversations about what health means.