Cooking healthy meals

Seniors learn and spread the mes­sage about healthy cook­ing to other seniors.

BY: Eleanor Yap

A Healthy Cook­ing Inter­est Group has sprung up at the Paya Lebar Kovan CC and the mem­bers are not all women. Ini­tially a group of five women (four Chi­nese and one Malay) attended the Health Pro­mo­tion Board’s healthy cook­ing class. Bonded by a com­mon inter­est in cook­ing, the women decided to form the Healthy Cook­ing Inter­est Group at the CC in 2009 after attend­ing a Health Pro­mo­tion Board Work­shop. They dis­cov­ered oth­ers shared a sim­i­lar pas­sion for healthy cook­ing and they decided to meet on a reg­u­lar basis to they could share and learn from one another.

Today, the group has grown to 25 mem­bers, with five of them being male. Seventy-​two-​year-​old Wang Yan Sing is all too happy to be a part of the group as he has learned from the group that seniors should eat healthy food. “Just because it is healthy doesn’t mean the food has to taste bland. With the use of nat­ural ingre­di­ents such as fruits and spices, the dishes will be just as tasty.”

Spread­ing the message

The group, which is one of three healthy cook­ing groups at the var­i­ous CCs, has a sim­ple mis­sion – it advo­cates healthy cook­ing such as using more veg­eta­bles and/​or fruits in their dishes and cook­ing meth­ods that pre­vent exces­sive intake of fats, salt and/​or sugar.

The mem­bers not only learn from each other, but they also take turns shar­ing recipes with fel­low seniors par­tic­u­larly through cook­ing demon­stra­tions dur­ing the ses­sions. For each ses­sion, exist­ing mem­bers also take turns to bring along another senior as to spread the mes­sage of healthy liv­ing. After each ses­sion, mem­bers enjoy a pot-​luck party with food that they have each brought along as well as food made by the group. 

Sixty-​six-​year-​old Ang Hui Lan (pic­tured above, left, with mem­ber Sim Lye Choon, who was the chef for that ses­sion and shared/​cooked those dishes (shown in pic­tures above) with fel­low inter­est group mem­bers), chair­per­son, Paya Lebar Kovan CC Senior Cit­i­zens’ Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee (SCEC) and found­ing mem­ber of the cook­ing inter­est group, said that the “Healthy Cooking-​cum-​Pot Luck Gath­er­ing” pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for seniors to get together, make new friends and widen their social circle.

Asked to share five tips on healthy cook­ing, Ang noted:
• Include more veg­eta­bles and fruits
• Use less oil and sea­son­ing
• Use fresh ingre­di­ents
• Use less preser­v­a­tives
• Bal­anced menu such as a mix of fried and steamed dishes

More healthy cook­ing groups

The PA Active Age­ing (AA) Coun­cil hopes other CCs will fol­low suit and start their own healthy cook­ing groups for seniors. David Ong, chair­man of the PA Active Age­ing Coun­cil, said, “We want to raise the aware­ness of eat­ing right even for events organ­ised by our grass­roots organ­i­sa­tions (GROs). At times food served at our GRO func­tions may not often be very healthy and we should look into serv­ing health­ier choice of food, which is bal­anced and of good nutri­tional value. 

“Edu­ca­tion is impor­tant for the food cater­ers, grass­roots lead­ers and par­tic­i­pants for the need to serve health­ier food and the nutri­tional val­ues in con­sum­ing them. The AA Coun­cil would like to spin off our Motto – ‘Age Well, Start Now!’ to ‘Age Well, Eat Right Now’.” The Coun­cil hopes to set up 50 health and nutrition-​related inter­est groups that are tar­geted for the seniors within the next five years.

** The Healthy Cook­ing Inter­est Group usu­ally meets every sec­ond Tues­day of the month (next one being August 3, this date is sub­ject to changes, please call 6284 4261 to con­firm) at 7pm to 9.30pm at Paya Lebar Kovan CC, Blk 207 Hougang St 21.

Another group, Gey­lang Serai CC SCEC Healthy Lifestyle Group usu­ally meets every first Sun­day of the month from 10am to 12pm (next one being July 4, the venue to be con­firmed later, please call 6747 2919 for details). As of presstime, the third inter­est group at Queen­stown CC has yet to plan their next gath­er­ing so no infor­ma­tion could be provided.