DAVAO CITY (2 April) — What did Ferdinand Magellan eat as he traveled through the Philippines?

For writer and historian Dr. Macario Tiu, the question leads to a different reading of History– one grounded not in war, treaties, or conquest, but in food.

“Before you pledge for today’s vegan diet, you must do a food tour, a historical food tour,” Tiu said during his talk at Utanon: V40 Culinary Workshop on Plant-based Heritage Food of Davao.

Here, Tiu revisited the accounts of Antonio Pigafetta, the Italian chronicler of Magellan’s Expedition, to trace what the crew encountered as they moved across the archipelago.

Tiu began with a question drawn from his earlier research on Lumad cuisine.

“Doon sa Lumad cooking, ang mine-mention nila ay bamboo cooking. At sa kanilang mga tribo, bamboo cooking (In Lumad cooking, what is often mentioned is bamboo cooking. In their tribes, Who was the first to mention bamboo cooking, historically),” Tiu asked.

Among many indigenous communities in Mindanao, cooking rice and other food using hollow bamboo stalks  is a longstanding practice. In his search for its earliest documentation, Tiu turned to Pigafetta’s writings.

In Chapter 30 of Pigafetta’s Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo (A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation), Pigafetta writes, “There are also coconuts, sweet potato, sugarcanes, roots like turnips, and rice cooked under the fire in bamboos or wood, which lasts longer than that cooked in pots.”

For Tiu, this seemingly small detail carries larger implications. By tracing food practices and cooking methods recorded in Pigafetta’s account, he mapped the movement of the expedition beyond the more commonly taught narrative that ends with Magellan’s death in Mactan.

Tiu said Pigafetta mentioned bamboo cooking once, in Palawan (“Pulaoan”), while other communities apparently cooked using clay pots or palayok. By closely tracking this reference alongside the expedition’s route, Tiu surmised that the group did not reach Butuan (a common assumption) but continued moving through parts of Mindanao after Magellan’s death, with landfalls in areas such as present-day Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga City, Sultan Kudarat, and the Sarangani Islands.

This chapter in Philippine history often ends at Cebu, where Magellan was killed in 1521. But Tiu pointed to Pigafetta’s notes on food, trade, and encounters across multiple locations — including Palawan, Zamboanga, and Maguindanao — as evidence, in Tiu’s reading, that the expedition continued moving through regions often absent in standard textbook accounts.

“Kasi sa ating history book, wala ‘yan na-mention eh. Kasi they ended only with Magellan’s disaster in Cebu. After that, they became silent. And told us that, nawala na. So, wala gyud napansin ang Mindanao,” Tiu said. “Now you know… The Magellan ships’ survivors reached Davao.”

(Because in our history books, that isn’t mentioned. Because they ended [the story] only with Magellan’s disaster in Cebu. After that, it becomes silent, as if everything just disappeared. So Mindanao is not noticed at all) In this reading, food becomes a form of historical evidence. Mentions of rice, fish, wine, root crops, and cooking methods — such as bamboo cooking — are clues to, not only diet, but geography, movement, and cultural exchange.

Tiu’s talk moves across the route of the expedition: from Samar and Limasawa, to Cebu, and onward to other islands where the crew encountered local communities, traded goods, and recorded what they saw and consumed. Along the way, Pigafetta’s notes document a wide range of food: from bananas and coconut, to rice wine and seafood.

By foregrounding these details, Tiu reframes early colonial encounters through everyday practices.

“Food along the way,” he said, becomes a record that reveals both the presence of indigenous knowledge systems, and the extent of early contact between local communities and foreign expeditions.

In this sense, more than a culinary technique, bamboo cooking becomes a marker of continuity, linking present-day indigenous practices with some of the earliest written accounts of life in the archipelago. (Bea Gatmaytan/MindaNews)