What’s one thing common among ibus, puto, pakaskas, kesong puti, or pinangat? Yes, you’re right! All of them use plant leaves—edible, folded, wrapped, wound, or woven around the food itself.
Leaves of plants, abundant and sustainable, have been used since ancient times to wrap and cook food in many countries around the world. Think of Thailand’s grilled chicken wrapped in pandan leaves; sarma or Yugoslav dishes wrapped in grape leaves similar to the Turkish dolma; or Japan’s mochi or sushi wrapped in cherry blossom leaves, sakurazushi, or persimmon leaves, kakinoha-zushi.
Antonio Pigafetta, the Venetian explorer who accompanied Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 to the Philippines was the first to describe Cebuano cakes of rice and millet wrapped in leaves. In 1613, the Tagalog dictionary of Fr. Pedro San Buenaventura described a similar rice cake called “soman.” The 1868 Vademecum Filipino, a Spanish textbook for learning Tagalog, calls it “suman” made of glutinous rice “malatquit” and wrapped in leaves of palm or banana.
Leaves galore
Our rice cakes made of rice, ground corn, mashed saba, or root crops are wrapped with a variety of leaves: banana, coconut, taro, buri, corn sheaths, and many other plants. Strips of coconut and buri leaves can be woven into small food containers. Such leaves are preferred as wrappers due to their structure, pliability, and aroma imparted to the food.
The versatile and large banana leaves can be folded several times as food containers; it can be folded into a triangle or cone like a bowl, with its ability to hold liquid. Banana leaves are used as serving platter for lechon, pancit, or rice. Aside from its aroma, banana leaves have antibacterial properties that prevent food from spoiling faster.
Suman and all its variations, tamales, tupig, and sinaing sa isda are wrapped and cooked in banana leaves as well as pastil or cooked rice topped with shredded meat of Maguindanao and Maranao. The pusô in the Visayas and Mindanao is rice cooked in woven pouch made from coconut palm strips; also used in suman sa ibus or simply ibus of Quezon, Bicol, and Western Visayas.
Sweet and savory
Tikoy anahaw of Quezon province uses anahaw leaves; binaki, a steamed cake in Malaybalay Bukidnon made of grated young corn, milk, and sugar and wrapped in corn husks. Pili conserva from Bacon, Sorsosogon is wrapped in minunga (binunga or samak) leaves. Its English name is elephant’s ear or parasol leaf tree.
Pinurunan is a round rice cake made of grated coconut, ground rice, and sugar wrapped or woven with coconut leaves, particular to Catanduanes. Binagol is an Eastern Visayas delicacy made of taro, coconut milk, nuts, cooked in half coconut shell and wrapped in banana leaves. Ifugao’s binakle or steamed rice cake is wrapped in banana or rattan leaves.
In Samar, its latik and suman sa ligia are wrapped in hagikhik (tagikhik) or talipupo leaves, named after its rustling that sounds like laughter. Kinagang, Sorsogon’s version of tamales, is also wrapped in hagikhik.
For savoury food, taro or gabi leaves are widely used in Bicol cooking with coconut milk: pinangat and inun-un; Iloilo has its pangat nga gabi, a mix of pork and fish wrapped in gabi leaves and cooked in coconut milk.
The binaod of Sagada is a delicacy of ground rice with salted pig intestines or sugared peanuts wrapped in chayote leaves. Tinuom in Cabatauan, Iloilo is a chicken dish cooked in banana leaves; tinuom nga kagang is another version using freshwater crabs and shrimps.
Maguindanao’s fermented rice or tapay is wrapped in alim leaves; known as sapal in Panay, it is wrapped in talus leaves in Antique.
The scourge of plastics
Now is the time for a serious rethink about our overwhelming use of plastics in our everyday lives. Reviving the use of natural food wrappers and natural packaging instead of plastics may offer a sustainable solution, albeit a small one, to our planet and ourselves.
Amidst the rapid increase of plastic pollution and human exposure to plastics today, studies have found plastics in the human heart, the blood vessels, the lungs, the testes, the placenta; in other words, inside major human organs that would ultimately cause harm.
Our brain contains around a standard spoon of nanoplastic particles, crossing the blood-brain barrier, says a recent CNN report (3 February 2025). Meat, fruits, and vegetables, salt, sugar, and rice have tested positive for microplastics. CNN has also reported that many teabags are made of plastic; researchers at McGill University, Canada found that brewing a single teabag releases 11.6 billion microplastic and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles into the water. A University of Queensland study found that for every one-half cup or rice that people eat, three to four milligrams of plastic are consumed. A liter of bottled water contains an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven types of plastics.
We are literally stuffing ourselves with plastics that will stay forever in the environment.
