Healthy living at Eastwood City

Eastwood City is Green City," declares the flyer, and to encourage the public to "Live Life Well," a campaign was launched to persuade urban dwellers to "eat right, keep fit and go organic."

Enrique Soriano III, president of ERA Realty who conceptualized the campaign explains, "What people need to realize is that staying active and eating right are keys to long-term wellness – and that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is the main philosophy of Green City."

To convince couch potatoes like us to get on our feet and lose the love handles, jiggling adipose deposits and lard fetuses, physical fitness activities are held regularly in Eastwood City. These include aerobics classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the City Walk 2, and tai-ichi exercises on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Yoga classes for physical and mental relaxation are an option, while the more energetic individual can do high impact activities, like jogging. If one gets lonely running alone, he can join other runners at the Central Plaza open jogging paths from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. every Sunday. The best part about embarking on an exercise regimen at Eastwood City is that the fitness activities are free.

A weekend organic market is also open to provide consumers with produce that is cultivated and grown without the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides. The Organic Producers and Traders Association (OPTA) advocates the use of organic products as a healthier alternative to commercially-grown crops. Unlike mass-produced fruits and vegetables that are sometimes treated with chemicals to preserve them during shipping, organic produce is sold almost immediately after harvest. Thus, aside from being untainted with possibly harmful chemicals, the flavors of the food are maintained and nutritional integrity remains intact.

While it is ideal to prepare one’s own meals to ensure that "eating healthy" is always achieved, hectic schedules and busy lifestyles make this an impractical option. One has to eat out sometimes, and the challenge is to find restaurants with healthy choices on their menus. Thus, in recognition of the importance of good health, Eastwood City invited 10 of the restaurants in the area to support its campaign in promoting a healthy lifestyle. Each restaurant was asked to prepare a special dish, tailor-fitted for those wanting to "eat right," and members of the media were invited to sample the healthy and tasty alternatives at an intimate gathering at the Eastwood City Cinema lobby. The following are what we tried.

Pho Hoa’s pomelo and shrimp salad was a colorful medley of lettuce greens, turnip slivers, julienned carrots, steamed shrimp, flaked chicken meat, cabbage strips and pomelo sprinkled with shallots. Each mouthful was slightly sweet, salty and refreshing. I particularly enjoyed the sweet morsels of pomelo that had the tiniest tinge of tartness. The shrimps were freshly steamed and were just right – neither too salty nor too dry. They were a perfect foil for the sweet pomelo and succulent lettuce leaves. The crisp turnips and carrots lent visual appeal and texture to the tasty salad. The flaked chicken meat was there, but was overwhelmed by the flavors of the salad’s other components.

Ebisu Grill serves Japanese food. The Ebisu salad of tomato, lettuce and cucumber with a sesame/soy dressing was light and uncomplicated and remained true to the Japanese cooking ethic. The best and freshest ingredients were put together in a simple yet flavorful salad dish.

Shanghai Bistro is the restaurant that serves Shanghai and Hongkong cuisine. Healthy items from the restaurant’s menu included a vegetarian dim sum of shiitake, button and black mushrooms with young corn and turnips, and braised vegetable shark’s fin with dried scallop, a vegetable paupiette or roulade of wombok or Chinese cabbage cooked in a light, slightly salty sauce. The steamed vegetable dumplings were a delicious alternative to the steamed pork siomai that I usually order at Shanghai Bistro.

Recipes serves Asian cuisine, and the dish they prepared for Eastwood City’s Green City campaign was tofu and vegetables with garlic, chili and tempura sauce. Green and red peppers, sweet potato and eggplant were combined with tofu, and the salad dressing used a cholesterol-free soya oil base.

Kangkong in sambal sauce was Something Fishy’s healthy alternative. It was kangkong or swamp cabbage/spinach sautéed with red chillies, shrimp paste and garlic. As expected, it was a bit spicy, but most of us found it quite delicious, especially as the flavors were familiar to us. Shrimp paste, after all, is merely shrimp bagoong to Filipinos. An interesting bit of food trivia: Did you know that kangkong is listed in Webster’s New World Dictionary of Culinary Arts as "a plant native to the Philippines"?

Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf’s herb linguini was a crowd pleaser. With a dressing of tomato, basil, onions and carrots with shaved Parmesan and balsamic oil, each helping was approximately a mere 200 calories – a filling alternative for weight-watchers.

Mexicali served a delicious taco veggie salad surprise and a garden burger made from rolled oats, carrots and brown rice. It would take some time for carnivores and fast food junkies to get used to the milder flavor of the garden burger, but the presentation is good for those unwilling to go cold turkey when shifting to a vegetarian diet. When you quit smoking, you need your nicotine patches and lollipops. Carnivorous burger junkies need to devour something that looks like a burger, and the garden burger is a healthy alternative.

Finally, it was time for dessert. Twist, located in Eastwood City 1, had an unusual and delicious green tea cheesecake that had me reaching out for second helpings. And Cafe Adriatico had a fun dessert where you skewered cubes of fruit and dipped these into a thick and tasty fondue of chocolaté eh. Delicious!

"So how did it go?" asked my non-vegetarian friends. I initially thought that a purely vegetarian menu would be quite boring. A good menu, like a good story, should have the right balance of dramatic elements. Just like a meal usually starts with a salad, I previously thought that an all-vegetable menu would be quite strange – like a senseless story strung together with beginnings. Happily, at Eastwood’s Green City event, I was proven wrong. Embracing a healthy lifestyle certainly makes sense. Going all vegetarian need not be a boring, senseless or dreary option after all.