C6 Tuesday, April 1, 2014
FITNESS & WELL-BEING
Calista Goh, of Anything But Salads, prepares her Rawnola. Photos: Jonathan Wong
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fter Calista Goh had surgery to remove a 6.5cm-long benign tumour on her intestinal wall in 2008, she found that she could hardly stomach any food. A law school freshman at the University of Bristol at the time, she stumbled onto London’s first raw vegan restaurant, Saf. Her meal there was the first after surgery that didn’t bring pain, bloating or diarrhoea. “The food was so good, I didn’t think about meat,” says Goh, 29, a Singapore native who admits to eating everything and anything in the past. So inspired was she by her new plant-based diet that she went on to take raw vegan food preparation courses and worked at vegan cafes. Armed with a law degree, at the end of 2011 she moved to Hong Kong to join her thenboyfriend. But she found it difficult to stick to her diet due to the lack of healthy options here. In forums online, she read of similar challenges others were facing. Goh decided to ditch her law career and start her own raw vegan health food company, Anything But Salads. “Working as a lawyer would pay well, but after having my health issues, I realised that money wasn’t everything,” she says. Initially offering food catering and delivery meals, the company last August moved into snack manufacturing. All
Raw health food snacks have become part of the mainstream realisation STEPHEN COSTELLO, STEPHENJAMES ORGANICS
Lite brigade A handful of entrepreneurs committed to healthier eating are filling a gap in the market for vegan and raw food snacks, writes Jeanette Wang the products are made by Goh in a small industrial kitchen at Shek Mun. Demand has been “incredibly good”, she says, with bestsellers being the Cheesy Kale Crisps and Sicilian Pizza Flax Crackers. In February, she had a booth at the Lohas Expo health foods trade show, which attracted many inquiries. “We’re in talks with Japan Home, Watsons Group and Dairy Farm to sell our snacks,” she says. Goh’s popular online store, anythingbutsalads.com, has customers from Singapore, Beijing and even Canada. Interest in raw vegan food has been picking up in Hong Kong in recent years. But while health food cafes had been sprouting up around the city, packaged snacks – convenient, portable and accessible – still were an untapped market. Brothers Stephen and James Costello realised this and decided to start Stephen James Organics in 2008. “We saw that a lot of people ate a good diet, but when we really drilled down, we found out that they had a ridiculous snack regimen,” says James. “So we thought, let’s make the best snacks in the world.” In 2011, the brothers introduced their organic whole food bars made from presprouted seeds and nuts in a facility in Macau. From being stocked at only a small health
food store run by a friend, the bars eventually proliferated in major mainstream retail outlets. “Sales have been good, up 100 per cent year on year since we started,” says Stephen. Hong Kong distribution rights for their products – which also includes pink Himalayan salt, volcanic pili nuts and Carazuc coconut flower sugar – has just been handed over to Classic Fine Foods, a local
importer of luxury European dairy, meat, seafood and deli products. Stephen says this is a “great sign that raw health food snacks have become part of the mainstream realisation”. Increasingly, local snack products stand shoulder-toshoulder with imports on supermarket shelves. “There sure is a growing demand for local health food products,” says Shima Shimizu,
a raw food chef who started selling her own range of raw food snacks called Raweggie last August. “People are aware it makes sense to buy and eat local. Local products are fresher and I think they taste better than those that have travelled for miles.” Shimizu works with Green Vitamin to make snacks such as flax crackers, kefir, kale chips and yogurt from a kitchen in
Raw power Anything But Salads anythingbutsalads.com Vegan snacks Lokali facebook.com/lokaliHK Café at 82a Stone Nullah Lane, Wan Chai Mana! Fast Slow Food mana.hk Vegan café at 92 Wellington Street, Central Nood Food facebook.com/noodfoodofficial Snacks and food bar at Pure Yoga, 2/F Asia Standard Tower, Central
Pure Swell pureswell.com Superfood blended drinks Rawthentic Food rawthenticfood.com Private dining, catering and cooking classes Raweggie cultureorganicsfood.com Vegan snacks
Stephen James Organics sjorganics.com Whole food bars
Sha Tin. “The inspiration to make my own products was simply the demand,” she says. “I was getting requests to sell these products. “The variety in Hong Kong is not as much as in other countries, but the more support we get from local consumers, the more we will be able to produce. I’m sure we will be having more and more new players in the market as well.” Raw vegan chef Moises Mehl also started selling his Nood Food raw living snacks and ready meals last August at Pure Yoga studio in Central. His most popular items are raw granola and maca bars. “There has been a growing awareness of health food snacks in Hong Kong over the past six years,” says Mehl, who operates from a kitchen in Chai Wan. “In the beginning, there was no awareness of the benefits of such products and the way they were manufactured to be considered as raw and healthy.” The foundation of a raw food diet is the belief that food in its most natural state is at its healthiest, containing all the enzymes the body needs for digestion and nutrient absorption. When food is cooked, heat is said to destroy these enzymes and nutrients, and create toxins, and the body works harder to digest food. In the early days, followers stuck to mainly greens, but they
soon realised that good fats, oils and proteins are important, too. “If you ignore those, you’re going to shrivel away,” say the Costellos, who adopted raw foodism in the 1990s. Nuts and seeds hence form a key part of a raw food diet. They are usually eaten pre-sprouted by soaking in water and then dehydrated in a special lowtemperature oven. This process is said to neutralise enzyme inhibitors that interfere with the body’s absorption of proteins and nutrients, and encourage the production of beneficial enzymes, which increase the vitamin and mineral content of the nut or seed. Because of the relatively tedious process for the average person to make his or her own raw food meals and snacks, raw foodies often turn to ready meals and packaged snacks. Each bag of Goh’s Rawnola, for example, takes about three days to make: buckwheat groats, almonds and pumpkin seeds are pre-sprouted overnight and combined with amber coconut nectar, dried cranberries, cinnamon, vanilla and Himalayan pink salt and left in the dehydrator for 48 hours. She has invested more than US$40,000 in her industrystandard dehydrator. Goh studied raw cooking at the Matthew Kenney culinary school in Santa Monica and tweaks recipes to suit local tastes. “The Western products tend to be too salty or too sweet, or very heavy in oils. Cantonese cuisine is lighter and more delicate in flavour,” she says. Business has been so good that’s she’s set to expand: this month she will open an Anything But Salads store in Tai Ping Shan, where she’ll sell not only packaged but also freshly made snacks, such as fermented nut cheeses, mycotoxin-free coffee, yogurt and superfood ice cream. jeanette.wang@scmp.com
FIT & FAB
Happy trails help teacher of disadvantaged children to stay positive ................................................ Rachel Jacqueline life@scmp.com Growing up as a “typical Aussie”, Brendan Davies favoured team sports such as cricket and football, where competing was secondary to socialising. Confronting his 30s – and an expanding waistline – he decided to give up his gregarious pastimes in favour of running. The decision changed the course of his life. Since then, Davies, 37, has undergone a meteoric rise in ultrarunning, transforming from rookie to elite in a few years. In 2012, he was awarded Australian Male Ultrarunner of the year and last year he won the nation’s biggest trail running race, The North Face 100 Australia, snatching the record held by world-renowned ultrarunner Kilian Jornet. Last month, Davies visited Hong Kong to compete in the MSIG Sai Kung 50-kilometre trail race, and finished third. He used the race as a training run to prepare for a string of international races over the next three months in New Zealand, Japan and the US. Apart from an intense
eight-times-a-week training regime, an important ingredient in his running success is his career. Davies teaches children with mild intellectual disabilities and behavioural disorders in western Sydney. “It’s a challenging role,” Davies says with a measure of understatement. “Western Sydney is a very disadvantaged area with a lot of social problems. It’s not a traditional classroom in any sense with book work, chalk and talk. Most of the lessons are hands on and physical. We spend half of our day outside.” Davies moved into special education teaching as a challenge, as well as a way of balancing his career and running pursuits. “I’m always challenging myself and always looking for new challenges. I felt teaching had become one-dimensional.” He now schedules his training and international competition around teaching commitments: before and after school, over long weekends and during school holidays. And he finds that running has become an important tool in processing difficult days and in helping him improve both as a
teacher and as a human being. “I can sometimes have very challenging days where kids are quite violent, impulsive and aggressive – it’s not their fault,” he says. “I use trail running as a way to process and to think through how I handle situations and how I could handle them better. It’s a time for reflection. It’s that time you need.” What does your running bring to your career? First of all, it makes me a more patient, tolerant person. I have to be, in my job. I think if I didn’t have the mental health and the physical benefits I get from trail running, I wouldn’t be the teacher I am.
Brendan Davies competing in the MSIG Sai Kung 50.
Have you ever thought of giving it all up to be a professional, fulltime runner? I’d love to, I think it would be a nice lifestyle for a while, but I don’t think it’s sustainable. I am friends with a couple of professional runners who have told me that, since going full time, training has become harder. They have too much free time. Work gives structure on which to base your training and provides balance. I have those
windows before work and after work, in the weekends, to really take advantage of, and I do. When fitting it all in, does it ever feel like hard work? Trail running is such a beautiful sport. If it was just road running, I think it would be hard work, but it’s almost like it’s not a sport or training for me: I’m simply doing what I love to do. Being outdoors is such a de-stresser and it gives me an opportunity to get away and just forget about things for a little while. But then there’s obviously hard training sessions like the track – then it definitely feels like hard work. Do you think that running is a selfish sport? I guess running goals can be very individualistic. But the community of runners is a huge part of trail running. If it wasn’t for the running community I don’t think I would have quite the same passion. Being around people all the time, running becomes more than just a sport – it becomes part of your life. Runners become your best friends and the reason you get out and run.
How do you handle the label of “elite” runner? I just try to be accessible to everybody; to show people that I’m just a regular runner who’s just a little more obsessed than the average person. I still get to the local running events near my home in the Blue Mountains, not just the big events. I still train with my running club where it all began, and I’ll race anywhere. What motivates you to compete? Travelling is a great motivator; running internationally is a chance to meet new people. But for me experiencing and overcoming new challenges is probably the biggest motivator. I’m constantly seeking out the biggest and the hardest challenges. Where do you want running to take you? My focus this year is all about international running. I’ve set myself a goal of achieving a really good international result. But the truth is, I don’t know quite what that is yet – it’s all relative to the day. But I want to run a really good, proper race at one of these big events. Wherever that gets me, I’ll be happy with that.