Pinakbet is essentially whatever mixed vegetables a household has on hand, cooked with bagoong and usually some pork, and that combine-what-you-have approach turns out to be one of the more gut-friendly ways Filipino food gets made. A single pot regularly carries five or six different vegetables in one dish.
What a typical pot brings together
Why the mix matters more than any single vegetable
Different gut bacteria specialize in fermenting different fiber types, which means a pot combining bitter melon, eggplant, squash, okra, and string beans is feeding a much wider range of your gut bacteria than any one vegetable eaten alone could. This is the same principle behind research showing that people eating more than 30 different plant types a week carry more diverse gut bacteria than people eating fewer than 10.[1] A single serving of pinakbet can cover five or six of those plant types in one sitting.
What the bagoong adds beyond flavor
Bagoong, the fermented shrimp or fish paste used to season pinakbet, is itself a fermented product, though the fermentation is generally not the live-culture kind that survives into the final dish once it's been cooked into the vegetables. What it reliably adds is sodium and umami depth, and bagoong can be a large contributor to sodium intake in a dish that's otherwise vegetable-forward.
Making the pot even more varied
Pinakbet recipes already vary by region and household, and that variation is an advantage rather than something to standardize. Rotating which vegetables go into the pot from week to week, rather than making the exact same combination every time, extends the range of fiber types your gut bacteria encounter over a month. Adding one vegetable you don't usually include, patola, labanos, or a leafy green like kangkong, is a small way to widen that range further. Pairing a vegetable-forward pot like this with a fiber-rich legume such as monggo covers even more ground in one meal, and the same fiber-diversity logic applies to root vegetables like gabi.
What to do with this
Vary which vegetables go into your pinakbet from week to week rather than repeating the same combination, and add one vegetable you don't usually include to widen the fiber types your gut bacteria encounter.
This content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice.
- McDonald et al., American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research, mSystems
