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<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-10/maria-orosa-sm.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Maria Orosa" />
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(A digitally restored and colorized photo of Maria Y. Orosa)
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She was a Filipina food technologist, pharmaceutical chemist, humanitarian and war heroine.
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As a government-sponsored scholar, Orosa earned a bachelor's and master's degrees in pharmaceutical chemistry, and an additional degree in food chemistry from the University of Washington. She worked in fish canneries in Alaska during her summer breaks in college.
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Although offered a job as an assistant chemist by the Washington state government, Orosa returned to the Philippines in 1922. She initially taught home economics at the Centro Escolar University, and later transferred to the Philippine Bureau of Science's food preservation division. Orosa wanted to help the Philippines become self-sufficient, as well as empower Filipino families. She organized 4-H clubs in the islands (which had more than 22,000 members by 1924), and traveled into the barrios to teach women how to raise chickens, preserve local produce, and plan healthy meals. Orosa invented the palayok oven to enable families without access to electricity to bake, and developed recipes for local produce, including cassava, bananas, and coconut. 
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Her banana ketchup became a favorite condiment and cooking ingredient in the archipelago. She also developed wines and calamansi nip, a desiccated and powdered form of a citrus fruit also used to make reconstituted calamansi juice, banana ketchup, and is also used in other recipes. Orosa ultimately became the head of the Home Economics Division and organized its Division of Food Preservation. Using both her local and technical knowledge, Orosa made culinary contributions and taught proper preservation methods for native dishes such as adobo, dinuguan, kilawin and escabeche.
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During World War II, Orosa used her food science background to invent Soyalac (a protein-rich powdered soybean product) and Darak (a rice bran powder rich in thiamine and other vitamins which could also treat beri-beri). She also became a captain in Marking's Guerrillas, a Filipino guerrilla group organized by Marcos "Marking" V. Augustín.
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The guerrillas helped U.S. forces fight the occupying Japanese troops and employed carpenters to insert Soyalac and Darak into hollow bamboo sticks, which were smuggled to the civilians imprisoned at the University of Santo Tomas and in Japanese-run prisoners of war camps in Capas, Tarlac and Corregidor. The powders saved the lives of many starving imprisoned guerrillas and U.S. soldiers. Her "Tiki-Tiki" cookies (made using Darak) also saved many civilian lives during wartime food shortages.
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Although her family and friends urged her to leave Manila for her hometown as American, Filipino, and Japanese forces battled to control the city, Orosa refused, insisting that, as a soldier, she needed to remain at her post. 
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November 29, 1892: Maria Orosa, a food technologist, humanitarian and war heroine, was born in Taal, Batangas