Manny Pacquiao knows what he likes, even if his choice of food and beverage would make some queasy.
While the Filipino hero prepares for his May 2 fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr., he has been sticking with a tried-and-true diet that reminds him of his homeland and his childhood. A huge staple of that diet: bone soup ? for breakfast.
According to Pacquiao’s personal chef, the eight-division champ likes to eat ‘bulalo’ after his morning runs. Bulalo is a peasant-style soup from the Philippines and its crucial ingredient is bone marrow from a cow.
Cow bone soup is tame though; cross-fitting paleos have probably crushed three bowls of bulalo since opening this page.
Like many of his Filipino countrymen, Pacquiao also eats balut. What’s balut, you ask? It’s a fertilized duck embryo that’s boiled in its shell. It’s a popular dish in the Philippines, and is sold by street vendors and high-end restaurants alike. Pacquiao has challenged at least one pseudo-celebrity to eating it in the past. (Remember David Blaine? Yeah, us neither.) Actually, Blaine deserves credit for keeping his composure throughout the process. Not sure I’d have the constitution.
Another staple of Pacquiao’s training diet: warm milk. Yahoo Sports asked him exactly why he isn’t a fan of cold beverages, and his reasoning is also actually rooted in his upbringing.
Let’s be clear, though: Pacquiao may talk softly and seem mellow outside the ring, but you do not want to mess around when it comes to his diet. In a thorough feature by New York Magazine, Pacman showed what happens when he doesn’t get what he wants.
As relayed by Freddie Roach, Pacquiao had just weighed in for a fight and life-long friend/confidant Buboy Fernandez brought him his beef broth, as he usually does. But poor Buboy made a vital mistake.
“He forgot the warm milk,” Roach said, “and Manny slapped him right in the face.”
