Maria established such an
impressive academic record as recipient of B.S. and M.S.
degrees from Washington University in 1919 that she was
appointed assistant state chemist for the state of
Washington the following year. Yet she gave up the
prestigious post to serve her country. A true
nationalist.
As a pioneer food
technologist, her invaluable innovations and experiments
in plant utilization, food preservation and canning, and
her research, all of which started in 1935, have
incalculably enriched the Filipino diet for over six
decades, while continuing to serve as a mine of
scientific data to both government and private food
laboratories to this day. The over 700 recipes Miss
Orosa prepared and kitchen-tested herself have likewise
been a rich source or basis for countless cook and
recipe books published throughout the country and
abroad.
Miss Orosa pioneered in
the extraction of nicotine insecticide from tobacco dust
and tobacco waste material; rotenone from derris roots;
rice bran became food rich in Vitamin B1 or thiamin for
nursing mothers suffering from beri-beri. From the
by-products of nata de pihe manufactured vinegar; the
by-product of soybean curd became starch for bread and
cookies; powdered coconut flour was used for biscuits
and cookies.
Her many studies included
the preparation of dehydrated fruits and vegetables,
dehydration of meats, preparation of fish balls,
preparation of agar from seaweed, preparation and
utilization of peanuts for culinary and salad oil, she
pioneered in utilizing green banana flour for baking, in
the pickling of cucumber and green tomatoes, in the
making of catsup from banana, mango and the tomato, in
the utilization of native fruits in manufacturing wine,
and in the use of ash and lime for making
soap.
In peacetime, she
established and organized rural improvement clubs which
by 1924, numbered 22,000 members throughout the country.
She founded the Home Extension Service, sending hundreds
of her H.E. demonstrators to teach barrio housewives
better homemaking, childcare, meal planning, food
preparation and preservation, poultry-raising, home and
gardening techniques and handicraft to augment their
income. Her famous Palayok Oven was conceived for
housewives who could not afford electricity.
During the war, she
devised a process of canning food for the guerrillas. As
war dragged on, she made nutritious food substitutes
from traditional ingredients. Her "magic food," made
from nutritious soy beans, fed starving people and
guerrillas.
Maria did not survive the
war. Despite pleas from her family and friends and an
order from her guerrilla superiors to evacuate the city,
she refused to leave her post as chief Agricultural
Utilization Division of the Bureau of Plant Industry. A
captain with Marking?s Guerrillas, she sent food to the
soldiers, as well as American, British and other foreign
internees in concentration camps, hospitals, including
the Americans in UST, religious communities, the Jesuits
among them, many of whom would have perished from
malnutrition. A nationalist, freedom fighter and
humanist to the end, she felt it was her civic duty to
continue working. Her heart was struck by shrapnel from
American artillery fire in Manila.
At the Maria Y. Orosa
Memorial Hall in Diliman, Bureau of Agriculture
Extension Building, the plaque reads:
"Dedicated to the memory
of Maria Ylagan Orosa (1892-1945) pharmaceutical
chemist, home economist, humanitarian, guerrilla worker
and organizer of home extension in government, died in
line of duty, 13 February 1945.
This year marks the 60th
anniversary of the death of Maria Y.
Orosa.
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