Back to basics with Yalla Natural at QIFF
Eric Cousin, corporate executive chef at AMLAK, demonstrating how to cook quick, healthy and tasty meals.
The Yalla Natural roadshow is once again taking part in Qatar International Food Festival, showing thousands of visitors that healthy food can still taste great.
The roadshow is part of the Sahtak Awalan: Your Health First campaign that is run by WCM-Q in participation with the Ministry for Public Health. Yalla Natural aims to encourage families and children to get back to basics, using fresh, organic food, taking regular exercise and maybe even growing their own fruit and vegetables.
To help encourage them, the Yalla Natural truck is fitted out with lots of activities for all the family, including a planting desk where families can plant their own vegetable seeds to take home, cookery demonstrations, a healthy recipe wall, from which people can choose recipes to cook at home, and the famous blender bikes, where visitors are able to make their own delicious, healthy smoothies while exercising.
Nesreen Al-Rifai, chief communications officer at WCM-Q, said Yalla Natural - and the wider Sahtak Awalan campaign – is aimed at improving the health of the whole community.
She said:
“Through Yalla Natural we strive to engage with everyone in the community and give them the knowledge they need to protect their own health and the health of their family. The Qatar International Food Festival is a great opportunity to reach out to people and advise them about healthy lifestyles, as good health is one of the core tenets of Qatar National Vision 2030.
We are also very fortunate to be able to do so in the wonderful setting of the MIA Park and it is fitting that the Yalla Natural roadshow is taking place in such a beautiful, natural place.”
One of the star attractions of the Yalla Natural roadshow is Chef Eric Cousin, corporate executive chef at AMLAK, who is demonstrating how to cook quick, healthy and tasty meals, before offering visitors a sample of the finished dish. Chef Eric also oversees Chef’s Garden, the first farm-to-table restaurant in Qatar. Chef’s Garden, managed by AMLAK and located in Education City, partners with local farms to bring the most inspiring seasonal ingredients from the farm to the table using the freshest, ripest ingredients nature has to offer, without added chemicals and preservatives.
Chef Eric said:
“As always, it is a great privilege to work with Sahtak Awalan and be able to show people that you can make great tasting food in minutes – and that it can be extremely healthy. There is too great a reliance on convenient, pre-packaged food but I have been able to show people that food can be nutritious and tastes better than anything you can take out of a packet yet does not always involve a long preparation process.”
Sahtak Awalan: Your Health First was launched in 2012 in association with the Ministry of Public Health and the campaign’s strategic partners, Qatar Foundation, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Occidental Petroleum Qatar, Exxonmobil and Qatar Olympic Committee.