Gallo Pinto and Ruining Delicious Foods

Rice and beans – when cooked with some garlic, onions, peppers, cilantro and Lizano English Sauce even the hungriest, most active person is nourished, satisfied, and still left with enough money to buy that weekly lottery ticket. This is probably why “gallo pinto” is part (or all) of nearly every tico meal. Gallo pinto is the most traditional of all Costa Rican dishes. The word gallo means rooster and pinto means speckled/spotted. When the broth or caldo from the beans is mixed with the rice, the combination is the color of a speckled rooster. It is often served with fried plantains (which sometimes have squeaky tico cheese melted on top) and an egg that is fried or scrambled.

Another look at these ingredients might cause one to ask, “If Ticos live mostly off of rice and beans, why are diabetes, heart disease and cholesterol problems so prevalent?” It’s all about the ways things are cooked here: fried, fried, and fried a lil more. Gallo pinto, for example, is usually prepared in the morning using the rice and beans left over from dinner, but instead of leaving it as is to heat it up, it is fried in oil or margarine. It pains me on a regular basis to see people ruining foods that are healthy and delicious in their natural form by cooking them in a way that destroys their nutritive value. Not only is it unlealthy, it's more expensive!

Just take the preparation of white rice, for example. Most Ticos have a rice cooker, the advantage of which is my opinion is that you can make perfect rice without having to add any fat. You just add water, right? A tico would tell you, “wrong.” My host mom adds a half stick of margarine AND vegetable oil AND lots of salt to the rice cooker. The rice tastes good, but I would argue that it would taste just as delicious minus the 3,000 added calories. I’d rather get those extra calories from some ice cream and cookies. I went to a friend’s house for dinner the other day and she was making her own tomato sauce for pasta. I was stoked about the sauce until I saw her pull out a tube of lard and put half of it in a saucepan. I thought to myself, “Surely she’s not gonna….” I then watched in shock and sorrow as the delicious and healthy tomato sauce died a slow, painful death in the hydrogenated animal fat. It took all my strength not to scream out, “No!!!! Why?????? Why????????”

Why does this happen? I would argue for two main reasons: strong tradition and failure to actively seek out quality information. I love and fully respect that tradition is at the core of the Tico value system. Families are united, children learn to respect their elders and help around the house (well, girls do anyway), and everyone takes pride in all things and activities that are purely “Tico.” While having strong traditions is all fine and good, but it can get one into trouble if new ways of doing things are not also taken into consideration. Besides the trashy newspapers, people in my town basically never read, and while I cannot speak for other areas of Costa Rica, I’ve been told that this is very true throughout the country. It’s not that they cannot read (the literacy rate is over 97%), but it is not a part of their daily lives. Most of the information they receive comes from the television, which we all know is not the best source for accurate information. Today my host mom provided the perfect example of how misinformed people are about food due to what they hear on TV (she actually provides perfect examples of this all the time, bless her heart): She put a stick of margarine in a saucepan to make mashed potatoes and literally said to me (exact translation), “This doesn’t have any fat. It’s a healthy alternative to butter.” I politely told her that it did in fact have fat, and she gave me her usual, “Do you think so?” as though I was offering an opinion and not a fact. This type of conversation happens ALL the time here when it comes to conversations about food and exercise.

I guess my point is that it's a shame that Costa Rica, which is a Mecca of a million fruits and vegetables, has the potential to offer its people the healthiest of foods at a very low price, has medical professionals, large corporations, and a government that just don't seem to be making the necessary effort to provide people with the information they need to live healthier lives. I know this happens in the States as well, but even in some of the poorest areas back home there is better access to accurate information about nutrition and exercise than there is here. There are also more fast food restaurants and opportunities to live an unhealthy lifestyle in the States, but at least the information to life healthier is in exsistence.

I always try to incorporate nutrition and exercise information in my projects and daily conversations when appropriate, and take advantage of the fact that people often seek me out for this kind of information. It's a slow process but there are lots of people in my host family, exercise classes, and schools who have taken big steps to become healthier and are thrilled about the results. Women in my exercise class are now showing up 30 minutes BEFORE class to jump rope with me. My host newphew who never used to eat anything that wasn't white rice and egg now LOVES fruit (apparently because his gringa auntie does). My host parents caught on to my addiction to apples, and often reach for those instead of a fried empanada in the afternoon (they still eat plenty of empanadas, but still...it's something).

To get off my soap box, here’s a healthy recipie for making gallo pinto, which really is delicious. Costa Ricans usually make it with black beans, but sometimes with red beans (which is more common in Nicaragua). Go all out and have it with plantains and an egg. Hot sauce is also an excellent choice. ¡Buen provecho!