Ube has exploded in popularity, becoming basically unavoidable in the past few years. From cafés to restaurants to grocery stores, everyone seems to want a taste of ube. But with its exponential demand in the West, the Philippine yam has become distanced from its Asian roots.
What is ube, and why is it everywhere?
Ube, (pronounced oo-beh, not “oob,” don’t piss me off) or Dioscorea alata, is a yam known for its vibrant purple hue, cultivated across Southeast Asia and native to the Philippines. In 2024, T. Hasegawa named the tuber flavor of the year.
Your eye might have been drawn to it on a café’s menu, in a new latte with a cold foam tinged lavender or a marbled cake loaf on display. Or maybe you’ve seen it find its way into restaurants’ menus: glance to the table beside you, and you see purple drinks, appetizers, and desserts.
Suddenly, the aisles of grocery stores are decked in purple packaging: from mochi to ice cream to eye-catching snacks, ube is everywhere.
But the purple yams’ growing popularity in the West emphasizes their visual appeal to consumers, neglecting their cultural roots and significance.
Just like matcha, ube has become estranged from its ethnic origins, eclipsed by the Instagramability of its striking color.
Asian roots, Western audience
In the first Tagalog-Spanish dictionary, Vocabulario de la lengua tagala (1613), ube has an entry, spelled as “uvi.” The ingredient also appears in recipes from some of the first Philippine cookbooks, like Condimentos Indígenas (Native Recipes), published in 1918.
Clearly, the archipelago has an enduring relationship to the tropical root crop, which is fortified by specific provinces’ cultural practices and beliefs.
For instance, Bohol in the Central Visayas, the producer for around 35% of the country’s ube output, has deep cultural ties to a specific variant called ube kinampay. Native to Panglao Island in the province, ube kinampay, deemed the “Queen of Philippine Yams,” is revered by Boholanos.
A symbol of hardship, perseverance, and resilience, ube kinampay provided sustenance to the province in the chaos of war, drought, and famine. IFEX Philippines noted how locals “kiss the ube kinampay whenever it accidentally falls to the ground” because of how valued and meaningful the crop is to their history and community.
But ube’s newfound international trendiness has diluted its profound cultural meaning.
What begins as a tuber cultivated in the Philippines for centuries, a staple in the cuisine of its people, is reduced to a pretty purple drink or dessert, populating American consumers’ feeds. From Starbucks to Peet’s Coffee to Trader Joe’s, it is clear that as the purple yam travels from east to Western markets, its cultural significance is lost.
Farmers are suffering
As ube savors the spotlight it’s accrued from Western consumers, farmers in the Philippines struggle to keep up with the demand.
In the New York Times, Teresita Emilio, an ube farmer from the province of Benguet, shared how she’s not used to the rising interest in her crop. In 2025 alone, approximately $3.2 million in ube was shipped abroad, with about half, $1.6 million in product, being imported into the U.S.
The expansion of consumers’ interest has forced farmers to sell almost all of their agricultural output to meet the demand. But since the tuber is “grown mostly on small, seasonal plots,” farmers are left with scarcely any leftover produce to plant for the next harvest.
A 2021 statistic from the Philippine Statistics Authority revealed how farmers remain the second poorest sector in the country, with a 30% poverty rate (and even then, the Philippine government has a tendency to understate and neglect issues affecting its people, and the rate is likely much higher than what has been reported).
As it makes its way from Filipino farmers’ soil to the shelves of stores in the West, American markets gentrify ube. Farmers reap none of the benefits of ube’s recent popularity in the West.
So while ube is being enjoyed in the West, the Filipino farmers who plant, harvest, and export it remain stuck in poverty, reaping a criminally low fraction of the profits that corporations accumulate by upcharging in the States.
Corporations have lost the plot
What’s doubly infuriating is that some companies don’t even feign cultural sensitivity to the ingredient they’ve profited from — they just exploit it for aesthetic purposes.
For instance, in 2025, Huda Beauty put out a setting powder in the shade “Ube Birthday Cake,” and a liquid blush shade named “Ube Berry.”
Not only do these products neglect to incorporate any aspect of Philippine culture into their marketing, but they also don’t even resemble the color of ube. Both shades are light pink, vastly different from the rich purple tones, light or dark, that ube encapsulates. The color and names of these products are jarringly desynchronized. My guess is that “ube” was haphazardly added to their names to cash in on the purple yams’ recent trendiness.
In the end, companies — whether they acknowledge ube’s Philippine roots or not — make insulting attempts to keep up with consumer trends that water down a cornerstone of Filipino culture and cuisine.
Is it that serious?
The average consumer might think, “Do I need to be that concerned about the cultural and racial implications of my purchases?”
One of my English classes this past quarter introduced me to the concept of cultural studies. It raises the idea that culture is never innocent or neutral, but always reveals power imbalances and discrepancies.
One of the ways these inequalities are revealed is “top-down,” or through the oppression of the marginalized — in this case, Filipino farmers — because their culture has been reduced to a capitalist device.
As a Fil-Am in the diaspora, this is the dynamic I see unfolding with ube: The growth of ube isn’t cultural, it’s corporate.
It’s a special kind of indignity when a food you’ve known all your life is stripped of its context and meaning, only for it to assume an entirely trivial one in its stead, reduced to something easy on the eyes.
Mayukh Sen, Food52
So when someone asks, Can’t you just enjoy it for what it is? A movie as a movie? A book as a book? A drink as a drink? The answer is: no. It is that serious. And oblivious, ignorant, or apathetic consumers are implicated when they buy ube products from companies like Starbucks or Trader Joe’s.
Surface-level interactions with the products that make up our daily lives risk obscuring critical analysis of our spending habits and how corporations market to us. American consumers become complacent in the dilution of Asian culture by glorifying ingredients like ube or matcha, and Filipino culture and producers are being sidelined.
Filipino-owned small businesses and farmers who produce ube aren’t benefiting from the ingredients’ recent trendiness in the West — large corporations are. As consumers, we have to be mindful of how we’re implicated in this imbalance.
Ube isn’t just pretty to look at or photogenic for your next social media post, or a craze that businesses must rush to capitalize on. It’s an ingredient that is distinctly Filipino — deeply ingrained in Philippine culture, cuisine, and history.
Alarming patterns & the future of ube
Ube isn’t the first Asian product to undergo the “rapid trend” treatment. Looking at drinks alone, matcha, chai, and boba have all experienced similar cultural reductions as they entered the mainstream.
Showcases of Asian culture that are ultimately inauthentic, motivated by profit, or cultivating some “inclusive” brand image are rampant. These sentiments are undoubtedly behind most of the commercial ube products put out in recent years.
Companies like Starbucks aren’t interested in paying homage to the cultures they profit from. They want to capitalize. And consumers who treat ube like a trend instead of a cultural touchstone for the Filipino community become enmeshed in the issue.
The West, specifically the U.S., has mastered the art of shaming Filipinos (or really, any ethnic group affected by its imperialist ambitions) into thinking their culture is backward and inferior, estranging them from their roots, and then selling it back to those in the diaspora. It’s infuriating, saddening, and ongoing.
What happens if ube is no longer “trendy?” No longer suitable for American consumers? Not so easily marketed to white women in Trader Joe’s?
Philippine Ube, a Filipino-owned company partnering with farmers in the Philippines, put it best: “Filipinos should own the ube boom.”
Find more resources on how and where to source ube, and why ethical sourcing remains critically important for both farmers and cultural preservation, here.
