Balut - by Margaret Magat

About the Book

"Grounded in folkloristics and anthropology, Margaret Magat explores both the traditional and popular culture contexts of balut. Balut - fertilized duck or chicken eggs that have developed into fully formed embryos with feathers and beaks - is a delicacy which elicits passionate responses. Hailed as an aphrodisiac in Filipino culture, balut is often seen and used as an object of revulsion and disgust in western popular culture. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, reality television programs, travel shows,food blogs, and balut-eating contests, Magat examines balut production and consumption, its role in drinking rituals, sex, and the supernatural, vampire-like legends behind it. Balut reveals how traditional foods are used in the performance of identity and ethnicity, inspiring a virtual online cottage industry via social media as well as the impact globalization and migration are having on cultural practices and food consumption across the world. The first academic book on balut, this is essential reading for anyone in food studies, folklore studies, anthropology, and Asian American studies"

Book Synopsis

In this book, Margaret Magat explores both the traditional and popular culture contexts of eating balut. Balut-fertilized duck or chicken eggs that have developed into fully formed embryos with feathers and beaks-is a delicacy which elicits passionate responses. Hailed as an aphrodisiac in Filipino culture, balut is often seen and used as an object of revulsion in Western popular culture.

Drawing on interviews, participant observation, reality television programs, travel shows, food blogs, and balut-eating contests, Magat examines balut production and consumption, its role in drinking rituals, sex, and also the vampire-like legends behind it. Balut reveals how traditional foods are used in the performance of identity and ethnicity, inspiring a virtual online cottage industry via social media. It also looks at the impact globalization and migration are having on cultural practices and food consumption across the world.

The first academic book on balut, this is essential reading for anyone in food studies, folklore studies, anthropology, and Asian American studies.

Review Quotes

"Magat's research is both novel and impressive ... As the first close study of balut's cultural significance for Filipinos abroad, Balut is a much-needed scholarly contribution demonstrating the racialization of food." --Journal of American Folklore

"Margaret Magat's new study Balut: Fertilized Eggs and the Making of Culinary Capital in the Filipino Diaspora, takes readers on a thought-provoking journey through the history and tradition of balut ... [A] valuable addition to our folklore collection. It will also prove to be useful to individuals, scholars, students, and researchers from a variety of disciplines who are interested in learning more about the history and tradition of balut, and Filipino cuisine in general." --Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture

"In food studies we often say that food can be a lens through which to view many aspects of culture and society: gender, race, and class; authenticity, migration, and exchange; taste, disgust, and delight; memory, tradition, and identity; and the list goes on. There is no food more apt than balut to encapsulate the power of food as a window to the human experience. We may be personally attracted or repelled by balut, but cannot be indifferent to its visceral power. With unflagging curiosity and respect for the food and its symbolic charge, Margaret Magat writes the book that asked to be written." --Jonathan Deutsch, Drexel University, USA

About the Author

Margaret Magat is an Independent Scholar and folklorist, USA.