MANILA, Philippines — “Nobody made me eat anything!” Vanessa Hudgens exclaimed at her recent Manila press conference, stressing that nobody forced her to eat Filipino food even if it was against her pescatarian diet.
As a pescatarian, the “High School Musical” star has vowed not to eat red meat or poultry, but fish and seafood are allowed. “Pescatarian” was coined in the early 1990s as a combination of the Italian term for fish,“pesce” and “vegetarian.”
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“I try to stay united with nature and the earth and I try to eat things that are clean and natural,” Hudgens explained why she is a pescatarian.
“You know, in the States, I don’t support the system that animals go through just to keep us from getting hungry. I cannot do it, I have to write it off.”
At her first ever Philippine visit last month, however, to film her documentary about her Filipino roots, Vanessa said one particular Filipino dish made her set aside her pescatarian diet for a while.
“I’m Prescatarian, but in Palawan, I was sitting there and there’s a plate of Chicken Adobo just staring at me,” she recalled.
“And I was like, ‘You know, this is my first trip to the Philippines! This is as authentic as it’s gonna get.”
Adobo, in general, is “marinated meat or vegetables braised into a stew,” according to Google, which made Adobo its first ever Filipino food featured on Doodle. Adobo was also Taste Atlas’ highest-rated Filipino dish on its best stews in the world list last year.
Vanessa did not regret defying her pescatarian diet for Chicken Adobo. She even described the experience as “surreal.”
“I’m eating Chicken Adobo, and I did, and it was so worth it!” she declared. “I’m not eating chicken again anytime soon. But that moment… I mean, there’s a time and place for everything!”
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