Deciphering a Non-Meal: Pantawid-Gutom and the Everyday Negotiation of Hunger in the Philippines

Pantawid-gutom literally means “to bridge hunger” and refers to a range of food and non-food products and practices in the Philippines that allow people to survive in between “serious meals.” What does its existence as a liminal category between food/non-food or serious/non-serious meal signify, particularly for millions of Filipino families who regularly experience hunger? Drawing on fieldwork in low-income urban communities on Luzon Island, and from a review of the scholarly and popular literature, we use local conceptions of pantawid-gutom—hitherto overlooked in the scholarship—as a starting point for exploring the lived reality of food insecurity in the country. The efficacy of pantawid-gutom, we argue, is both material and symbolic, providing temporary relief from the feeling of hunger and allowing people to suspend their ideas of what is good to eat while maintaining the hope that their socioeconomic predicament is something bridgeable.