In search of kota’s Masterchef
04-03-2015
The City of Johannesburg wants you, dear resident, to eat a healthy kota.
On Thursday March 5 scores of informal traders – who sell kotas (bunny chows) at schools, spaza shops and on the streets – will gather at Orlando Stadium in Soweto to be briefed about the Kota Fortification Competition, a new City initiative aimed at improving the nutritional value of Jozi’s favourite food stuff.
The initiative is part of Johannesburg Executive Mayor Councillor Mpho Parks Tau’s flagship Go Jozi Healthy Lifestyle Programme that seeks to keep lifestyle diseases and conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and cancer at bay by, among other things, promoting a healthy diet.
The programme, whose main objective is to improve Johannesburg's life expectancy, also encourages residents to get off their cars to either cycle or walk to their destinations and keep their bodies in shape.
On Thursday a total of 150 informal traders will be briefed on how the Kota Fortification Competition will work, according to Nomsa Nkosi, one of the supervisors of the Healthy Lifestyle Programme run by the City's Health and Social Development Department.
“The briefing session is to discuss the logistics of the competition with informal traders who sell kotas,” says Nkosi.
“We are looking at how we can have, say, healthy and fortified kotas because that is what people eat. This competition will help us come up with the healthiest kotas.”
The Kota Fortification Competition culminates in the winner being named on June 11.
Healthy eating forms an integral part of this initiative, which is in line with the city’s Growth and Development Strategy 2040 (GDS 2040).
“In the strategy, the City commits to working towards preventing communicable and non-communicable diseases, and encourages and promotes a healthy lifestyle by providing the necessary information to residents. As key stakeholders in the city’s growth and development agenda, informal traders are at the coalface of the drive to create a culture of healthy eating in our communities," says Member of the Mayoral Committee for Health and Social Development Councillor Nonceba Molwele.
According to her, the Kota Day Competition is an opportunity for informal traders and other residents who love the kota to come together and share information on how they can make a difference in the promotion of healthy living in the city.
Adds Nkosi: “All the informal traders have to do to stand a chance of winning the challenge is to get fellow residents excited about eating healthy, leading a healthy lifestyle, raising awareness of how food affects their health and happiness and improving life expectancy by minimising the risk of non-communicable diseases.
“We believe that it all starts with getting children to be food-smart at a young age,” she says.
The competition is open to all kota sellers operating in Johannesburg, especially those who sell at schools, street corners, spaza shops and homes.
To enter the competition, traders need to design, plan and prepare a healthy, fortified kota.
“Traders should think about the specific requirements of preparing a kota and show explicitly in the kota design how they catered for these requirements.
For example, they could show how they have catered for specific dietary requirements of the type of people eating kotas.
“The traders should embrace the ethos of healthy eating and base their entries on healthy nutritional ingredients with inspiration for their package in the city,” says Nkosi.
Entries will be judged – along the lines of the Masterchef – on creativity, presentation, nutritional balance and taste of the kota.