Why Radisson Blu is Going Green with its Organic and Healthy Food Festival?
“Healthy food is not about restrictions. It’s about indulging, but indulging smartly.”
For any skeptic or merely a lazy person, such as myself, it becomes rather easy to make the choice between kachchi — drenched in ghee, and a salad, way healthier but to me, doesn’t even compare with the taste of that delicious biryani. I used a salad as the obvious example of healthy food for two reasons- one, every time I think healthy, I think salads, and two, as far as healthy food is concerned, salads are not just the first thing that pops up in my head, it’s also the only thing. Healthy eating to me is about all the food that I cannot have, while others post their giant dinners on Instagram. Isn’t going healthy synonymous to restrictions? Chef Jed Archdeacon, Executive Chef, Radisson Blu Water Garden, vehemently disagrees.
“Healthy food is not about restrictions. It’s about indulging, but indulging smartly,” says Chef Archdeacon. When I was concerned with the apparent minimal variety that comes with the choice of going healthy, the upcoming International Healthy and Organic Food Festival tackles that notion with an international buffet, serving enough dishes to last me a year.
Talking about his inspiration behind highlighting healthy eating in Dhaka, Chef Archdeacon says that it was the obvious thing to do here, given the rise in demand for a healthier lifestyle but limited eateries that address those concerns. After working for a farming project in Bhutan, urging local farmers to not use chemicals and to start producing things more organically, the chef is convinced that spreading awareness and knowledge, along with debunking some popular myths about healthy eating, could potentially be the change that Dhaka needs.
He pointed out that there could be a healthier version of your favourite dish, like “Vitamin K biryani” — a recipe he came up with, which retains the taste, yet doesn’t harm the body quite like the wedding biryanis do. He also confirmed that there’s going to be a pizza station, and even a chocolate fountain — without the sugar and guilt. If that’s not enough to make you go healthy, I don’t know what is.
Witnessing how close families are in Bangladesh, the chef advises that if not for yourself, you should try eating healthy for someone you care about — your parents, your children, or even your best friend. At no extra cost or effort, there’s so much that’s preventable by substituting unhealthy elements with healthier ones; the chef even informed us about stevia, a sugar substitute that also grows here in Bangladesh and happens to be really cheap. In an added attempt to going healthy, Radisson even harvests edible flowers in-house, has its very own mushroom house, and also grows hydroponic lettuces.
Why go healthy, you ask?
Why not give it a shot, we ask back.
*International Healthy and Organic Food Festival 2017 started on the 21st November 2017, and shall go on for five days till the 25th November, 2017, at Radisson Blu Water Garden. Harriken is the app partner for the event. More on the event is coming up, so stay tuned, Harrikenators!
