Charity serves up healthy eating tips (From Asian Image)

Charity serves up healthy eating tips

1:03pm Monday 29th June 2009

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Hindu Mandirs, Sikh Gurdwaras, and Mosques across London will be joining the fight against heart disease as the British Heart Foundation (BHF) launches its South Asian Social Cooking Project to help places of worship prepare meals more healthily.

The heart charity will be sending dietitians to work with volunteer cooks in six places of worship over the next three months.

They will offer guidance on how to serve healthy, delicious meals on a large scale to congregation members, whilst reducing the amount of saturated fat.

The project, taking place across London over the next three months, was launched on the 20 June at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden, London.

Eating a diet high in saturated fat, found in foods like ghee, mithai, full fat milk, yoghurt and cheese, can increase cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart disease.

Most people in the UK eat too much saturated fat (1) and the average man should have no more than 30g of saturated fat a day and the average woman no more than 20g a day. Children should have less.

Among some South Asian groups the risk of premature death from coronary heart disease is twice as high as the UK’s general population (2) and this is thought to be partly due to a poor diet. Smita Ganatra, the dietitian heading up the BHF project in Neasden said: “We want to work with cooks and volunteers at Temples, Gurdwaras and Mosques to pass on simple tips about reducing the amount of saturated fat in cooking whilst still producing great tasting meals.”

“Because the South Asian community has a greater risk of heart disease it’s vital that we also give people the skills to be able to do the same at home. Cutting down on saturated fat is a simple way of helping to keep families healthy.”

As well as working with volunteers who prepare the food, the South Asian Social Cooking project hopes to provide information to 35,000 congregation members about how to make healthy lifestyle choices and improve diet. Healthy eating booklets will be available in English, Bengali, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, and Gujarati and the project will also be collecting pledges from people to eat less saturated fat.

Dr. Mayank R. Shah, head of the health services at BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, said: “We have worked with British Heart Foundation for a number of years to promote awareness on heart conditions.

"The social cooking project is another joint partnership which will help to raise awareness on healthy cooking. Social cooking is an important aspect of Indian culture and tradition and we hope that this project will be of benefit to the wider community.”

The BHF has produced a range resources for the South Asian community… For more information, please visit the website bhf.org.uk/publications or call the publications line on 0870 600 6566.

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