Cebu town holds cooking contest to promote healthy food despite pandemic

Participants of a cooking contest in Minglanilla town, south Cebu are happy to be part of the event that promotes healthy living. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

CEBU CITY — A town in south Cebu on Thursday held a cooking contest to encourage people to cook and eat healthy food especially amid the threat of COVID-19.

According to Councilor Rajiv Enad of Minglanilla town, they want to make people aware how important it is to prepare and digest nutritious food.

“It’s imperative to continue having a healthy lifestyle. It helps boost our immune system, and makes it stronger against sickness, and diseases, including COVID-19. When our immune system is strong, most likely, when we possibly get COVID-19, we won’t have the worst symptoms,” he told the Inquirer over the phone.

The cooking contest was part of Minglanilla town’s Nutrition Month which carried the national theme of “Malnutrisyon Patuloy na Labanan, First 1000 days Tutukan.”

At least 10 of Minglanilla’s 19 barangays participated in the cooking contest.

Nutrition scholars asked those who joined the contest to cook two kinds of food for an hour and a half.

Among the ingredients were fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, and other fresh produce.

The winners in the kakanin category are Linao Lipata (1st place); Ward 4 (2nd place); and Calajoan 2 (3rd place). They prepared linusak, camote pancake and sweetened banana, and banana turon, respectively.

For the main dish category Linao got the first prize for cooking sweet and sour fish while Guindarohan won the second prize after preparing humba nga nangka.

The third place went to Cuanos which cooked chop suey sa buko.

Those who won the first prize received P6,000 while the second place got P5,000.

The third prize winners brought home P4,000. The other participants got a consolation prize of P2,000 each.