Alex outlet wins City’s healthy kota competition
ALEXANDRA - Alex youth's food outlet wins City's healthy kota competition.
Alex resident Cindy Simelane’s passion for healthy food paid dividends when she won the hotly contested City of Joburg’s Healthy Kota Competition.
The 25-year-old Alex resident beat six finalists to claim bragging rights and the R25 000 first prize as the maker of 2016’s healthiest, tastiest and most nutritious kota (bunny chow) in town.
Simelane, a food trader at Naledi Sly and Takeaway on Richard Baloyi and 5th avenues, won Season 2 at the Pimville Skills Centre in Soweto. The competition is part of city council’s Go Jozi Healthy Lifestyle Programme initiated by Mayor Mpho Parks Tau to encourage residents to eat healthily and engage in physical activities to prevent lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure.
Simelane impressed judges with the variety of meat she used in her healthy kotas, and with the different and affordable options available to her customers after she introduced the healthy kota option on her menu.
Simelane said the competition was very challenging and part of a journey that taught her not to give up, even when she was not sure what she was going to put in her next healthy kota. She commended the other contestants for their challenge and thanked the city council for the opportunity to showcase her best, and for encouraging the contestants to provide customers healthy choices.
MMC for Health and Social Development, Nonceba Molwele, was pleased to see more food traders participating in the contest and urged residents to mobilise around the healthy kota so that school children could also eat healthily and fight obesity. “We want greasy and over-seasoned kotas to disappear and for people to spend less time at clinics,” Molwele said.
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Competition judge Phila Noah said the contestants showed great potential with great dishes, making the selection of the winner very tough. “Cindy’s kota was the most nutritious, the presentation appetising and the taste was excellent. The fact that she had three options of kotas to choose from was a cherry on top,” said Noah.
