Healthy Lifestyle Festival SG To Reach Over 80,000 Singaporeans In Push To Shape Healthier Lifestyles

Singapore, 7 November 2015 – Since the inception of the National Healthy Lifestyle Campaign in 1992, the annual flagship event has been an important initiative in Singapore’s push for a healthier nation. This year as Singapore celebrates SG50, the campaign has been refreshed as the “Healthy Lifestyle Festival SG”, marking its evolvement from a one-day event to a month-long of healthy festivities. The festival also celebrates the progress made in healthy living, recognising the success of health programmes and initiatives introduced. (Annex I provides more information on some of the Health Promotion Board’s programmes and initiatives over the last year.)

Themed “Live Healthy. Get More from Life”, this year’s Healthy Lifestyle Festival SG raises awareness of how Singaporeans can eat more healthily and prepare tasty and healthy dishes at home, incorporate physical activity to break up the monotony of a sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity, build up their mental wellbeing through positive thinking, take better care of their health through health screenings and adopt a smoke-free lifestyle.

Since the Festival kicked off on 3 October 2015, weekend road shows were brought to the community island wide. Over 32,000 Singaporeans have come through the Festival doors to learn how to eat healthy, be more aware of the need for regular screening and follow-up, understand how to take care of their mental wellbeing and pick up tips on how to keep physically active. The Festival showcases the many healthy living options available to Singaporeans and initiatives under the Healthy Living Master Plan which aims to make healthy living accessible, natural and effortless for Singaporeans.

“The Healthy Lifestyle Festival SG has been a great platform to show Singaporeans that healthy living is within easy reach. Through demonstrations, exhibitions and digital activities, we aim to show that the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle is rewarding, attainable and something
to be lauded,” said Mr Zee Yoong Kang, CEO, Health Promotion Board (HPB). “By promoting the importance of healthy living anytime and anywhere, as envisioned in the Healthy Living Master Plan, we aim to drive sustainable behaviour change and ultimately foster a community that embraces healthy living,” he added.

Other than sampling healthy and tasty food and drinks, learning to cook different types of healthy cuisines from experienced chefs and participating in fun mass workouts, event games and activities at the weekend roadshows, close to 8,500 have gotten their BMI checked, and more than 6,000 have signed up for HealthHub, Singapore’s first one-stop information and services portal, since its launch at one of the Festival roadshows on 18 October 2015. A total of 40 partners have also come on board in support of healthy living, introducing physical activity and healthier food and drinks options at the roadshows.

First “30-minute Healthy & Tasty Cook-Off Competition” Organised by HPB

For the first time, a 30-minute Healthy & Tasty Cook-Off Competition was also held as one of the highlights of the Festival. The competition challenges participants from all walks of life to create healthy and tasty meals within 30 minutes using healthier ingredients such as whole
grains, fruits and vegetables and Healthier Choice Symbol products. It aims to demonstrate how easy it is for Singaporeans, including busy working professionals, to cook healthy and tasty dishes at home. Dishes produced in the competition also show that healthy meals can
be just as tasty, unlike misconceptions of healthy food as being bland, only made up of greens or unappetising.

About 100 recipes of different cuisines were submitted for the competition and 16 pairs were shortlisted to compete in the semi-finals, which took place over 3 festival weekends, from 10 October 2015. Four semi-finalists teams will compete in the finale on 8 November 2015 at
the Festival’s anchor event. They will be judged on the taste of their dishes, nutritional value, creativity, presentation and execution. A mystery box will be unveiled at the start of the finale to reveal mystery ingredients to the teams. Each team will then have to come up with their
own recipe on the spot, incorporating the mystery ingredients. (Annex II provides more information on the competition and the four teams’ winning dishes from the semi-finals.)

The 30-minute Healthy & Tasty Cook-Off Competition complements HPB’s ‘Shop Healthy. Get More from Life’ campaign. Launched in July this year, the campaign encourages Singaporeans to opt for food products with the Healthier Choice Symbol (HCS) to prepare healthier meals when eating at home.

Healthy Lifestyle Festival SG 2015 – Anchor Event

The Healthy Lifestyle Festival SG 2015 ends with the anchor event, held at the Kallang Wave Mall on 7 and 8 November 2015. In addition to the finals of the cook-off competition, the event will offer a host of other hands-on activities, workouts, food tasting, games and more for the whole family, providing an occasion to celebrate healthy living every day.

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About Health Promotion Board

The Health Promotion Board (HPB) was established in 2001 as a statutory board under the Ministry of Health with the vision of building “A Nation of Healthy People”. HPB aims to empower the people of Singapore to attain optimal health, increase the quality and years of
healthy life and prevent illnesses, disability and premature death. As the key partner of national health promotion and disease prevention programmes, HPB spearheads health education, promotion and prevention programmes as well as creates a health-supportive
environment in Singapore. It develops and organises relevant health promotion and disease prevention programmes, reaching out to the healthy, the at-risk and the unhealthy at all stages of life – children, youths, adults and older Singapore residents. HPB’s health promotion programmes include nutrition, mental health, physical activity, smoking control and communicable disease education. HPB also promotes healthy ageing, integrated health screening, and chronic disease education and management.

More information can be found at

www.hpb.gov.sg

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Media Release

For more information on the article above, refer to Media Release [PDF, 665.6 KB].