This is a serious story about a unique woman — Filipina food technologist, pharmaceutical chemist, humanitarian, and war hero – that starts with ketchup.
Bright red and tangy-sweet, some say it’s close to Heinz … but this Philippine condiment is banana ketchup. Ketchup became popular in 1898 when America colonized the Philippines. But it was pricey; and tomatoes didn’t do well in the tropical climate. So, in the 1930s a food technologist named María Orosa decided to invent her own version.
Her ketchup (aka banana sauce) was smoother, thicker, and harder to shake out of the bottle. Made of local bananas, sugar, vinegar, and spices — with a dash of red coloring to make it resemble its American cousin – it’s a staple in Philippine markets. You can also find it at Walmart – in stores and online.
Filipino-Style Spaghetti
In the Philippines, it sweetens barbecue marinades and stews; some call it a must with fried chicken; it’s the key ingredient in the red “tomato sauce” for Filipino-style sweet spaghetti – which uses chunks of hot dogs instead of meatballs.
First mass-produced in 1942, it became so popular that in 2000 Heinz partnered with Nutri Asia, which manufactures ketchup for the Philippines. An ad campaign created by Heinz in 2019 “in honor of María Orosa” promised ketchup lovers would be “fascinated with its bold and delicious taste, the taste of overcoming any challenge, even making ketchup without tomatoes.”
But now for the serious story.
The fourth of eight children, María Orosa was born in 1893 in Batangas Province. Her father fought the ill-fated war of resistance to American colonization; her mother ran a small shop. In 1916, at 23, she came to the United States as a government-sponsored scholar, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry and pharmaceutical science from Seattle’s University of Washington.
She worked in the food lab at the university’s School of Pharmacy, experimenting with and testing products for compliance with government standards. A rare opportunity for a non-US citizen, she wrote to her mother in 1918, “Here in America, it is very difficult to obtain the kind of job I have. Before they offer to a person of color, such as a Filipino, Japanese, or Chinese, the jobs are first offered to whites.”
After graduating in 1921, she was offered a job as an assistant chemist for the State of Washington. But Orosa, a committed nationalist, returned to the Philippines to help her country become self-sufficient in food production. She joined the government’s Bureau of Science, leading its home economics and food preservation divisions.
Kitchen “Alchemist”
Called an “alchemist in the kitchen,” María Orosa conjured wines and jellies from native fruits, flour from bananas and cassava, and vinegar from coconuts. She developed local methods of canning fruit, notably frozen mangos, and invented the palayok oven – an earthenware pot used for cooking in areas without electricity. As journalist Jessica Gingrich wrote on the Lady Science website in 2020, “she nourished a nation through chemistry and plain old culinary ingenuity.”
In 1941, Japan invaded and occupied the Philippines. While Orosa’s family evacuated to their homes in Batangas, she stayed in Manila to feed those who couldn’t leave. And, following in her father’s footsteps, Orosa joined a resistance movement called Marking’s Guerillas, holding the rank of captain. Working in her lab with 400 students, she immediately turned her attention to inventing nutrient-dense foods to sustain local freedom fighters.
Hearty Guerilla Rations
Her most notable inventions were Soyalac, a drink made from soybeans, and Darak, a rice bran rich in vitamin B-1, that was baked into cookies. As guerilla leader, journalist, and friend Valeria “Yay” Panlilio wrote in a 1975 article, “one teaspoon a day of Darak could keep a starving man’s digestive system open and his bowels functioning with no cramps. A palm full could keep him on his feet. But two palms full, he could fight!”
Orosa also found a way to smuggle her lifesaving inventions to detainees in the Santo Tomás Internment Camp, where more than 4,000 civilians, most of them Americans, were held for four years. Local carpenters were hired to insert Soyalac and Darak into hollow bamboo sticks that were smuggled into the POW camp.
By 1945, the United States, Philippines and Japan were battling for control of Manila. Again, friends and family begged Orosa to return home to Batangas. But she again refused, opting to stay at her post – her lab at the Bureau of Science, which came under fire by American troops. A manuscript detailing her experiments, recipes, and the inventions she’d been working on were scattered because of the bombing. More about that later.
Killed by American Bomb
On her way to a bomb shelter, María Orosa was hit by shrapnel and carried in a pushcart by colleagues to nearby Remedios Hospital. Shortly after she arrived, she and over 400 others were killed when an American bomb fell on the hospital. With the Japanese shooting people in the streets, burials had to wait. María Orosa and the others were buried in mass graves several days later, her remains never identified. She was 51 years old.
But María Orosa wasn’t forgotten. The American Red Cross recognized her with a humanitarian award for her efforts to smuggle food to POWs. Her home province of Batangas installed a bust and historical marker in her honor. A street in Manila bears her name, as does a building in the Bureau of Plant Industry. And to commemorate her 100th birthday, the Philippine Postal Corporation issued a stamp in her honor.
Honored with a Google Doodle in November of 2019, she became the subject of a children’s book that won the 2023 Freeman Book Award honoring East and Southeast Asian books for children and young adults: Maria Freedom Fighter: Scientist and Inventor from the Philippines by Norma Olizon-Chikiamco.
700 Recipes
Remember her manuscript and details of her inventions being scattered in the aftermath of her lab being bombed? In 1970, after years of painstakingly finding, collecting, and collating them, her niece, Helen Orosa de Rosario, published a book of her aunt’s 700 original recipes, dozens of which remain staples of the Filipino diet.
In 2020, archaeologists from the University of the Philippines were excavating a tomb behind what had once been Remedios Hospital, thought to contain the remains of 12 volunteers, when they found a stone engraved “María Y. Orosa / Nov. 29 1892 – Feb. 13 1945 / Died In Line of Duty.” The simple stone is a memorial; it may not mark Orosa’s final resting place. But archaeologists think they know which mass grave may be hers. While understanding she may never be found, they continue to search.
