MBOMBELA – Chartwells is promoting healthy eating among schoolchildren to improve their well-being while enforcing nutritious daily meals and hosted a cooking competition in Penryn College on Tuesday where learners went against one another to produce the best nutritious meals.
Dieticians were also at the school hall teaching learners about healthy eating.
The learners were divided into two teams and and were expected to cook a healthy, well-balanced and nutritious meal and were allocated fifteen minutes to do that. The meal had to be prepared without salt as it is deemed to be one of the causes for heart diseases. They cooked using healthy olive oil.
According to Chartwells’ executive chef, Jean Van Staden, giving unhealthy food to young children is very dangerous because it means they will grow without a balanced body. He said that they want to enrich the lives of learners and the community as a whole through socially responsibility and planting the seeds of health and wellness.
He added that too much salt contributed immensely to diabetes, heart diseases and stroke amongst all people of different ages.
“We thought that we should have this competition where learners compete to eat healthy. If we teach them at an early they are likely to grow up following a good eating pattern,” said Van Staden.
He added that although healthy eating was considered to be expensive, having a balanced meal doesn’t necessarily mean one should go out of their budge to achieve healthy eating. ” If one can add a little vegetables, less meat and more fruits to the diet it can make a healthy meal and it doesn’t have to look sophisticated, ” he added.
According to Van Staden, Chartwells want to build sharp minds and strong bodies with a healthful, balanced approach to school dining.
