The budget meals that fit perfectly with your budget and keeps you healthy! /Contribute Photo: The Green Canteen Facebook page
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Are you looking for something that’s cheap and healthy at the same time?
There’s this place in Cebu City where you can get all those in one place.
The Green Canteen is a food hub for all those who are into eating healthy and staying away from the usual oily and fatty food.
Rey Xristan Buñing, an Occupational Therapist Clinical Instructor at Velez College in Cebu City, wanted to help those like him in the medical field to eat healthier, given the nature of their work.
“I started the canteen with the help of my friends, a cook, and a chef… we brainstormed on the menu and how we can make vegetables delightful to everyone’s taste,” says Buñing.
On May 21, 2019, Green Canteen opened its door to welcome customers to this new kind of dining experience in Arlington Pond, Barangay Cogon Ramos, Cebu City.
“As a health care professional, I guess there’s something I can do about it by putting up a unique alternative to our favorite dishes. Working in Velez for quite some time, I had difficulty finding meals that would help lower my cholesterol and maintain my blood pressure,” Buñing tells CDN Digital in an online interview.
Green Canteen operates Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. offering healthier varieties of food to choose from.
“We sell our budget meals for P55 that comes with two veggies one rice-free soup and unli drinking water, then we have P70 – one veggie meat one veggie one rice and a free soup and unli drinking water, (and) then for P80 – two veggie meats, one rice and a free soup and unli drinking water,” explains Buñing.
If you opt to bring your own lunch and just want some additional food, you can buy their vegetables dish ala carte at P35 per serving and P45 for the veggie meat dish per serving.
“We have a variety of humba, afritada, paklay, sisig, sinuglaw, tokwat vavoy, tofu brocolli, curry, bicolexpress, mushroom ginabot, bistektagalog and with the veggies we have mga stirfry vegetables, chopseuy, pancit, mangosalad, garden salad, pakbet, ampalaya, alugbati, kangkong, taogi, we also have thai springrolls, vietnamese springrolls, siomai, kebab, okoy na puso sa saging, dynamite rolls, tofu rolls,” he says.
They coined the catchphrase “budgetarian,” which means a vegetarian meal that within one’s budget.
This is their way of showing that you too can live a healthier lifestyle by eating right without really spending too much on salad shops and salad diets.
“Most of us have this problem and the stigma that ‘healthy is for the wealthy.’ So I told myself ‘why not make it available to everyone?’ And by this, we can also support our local farmers by personally handpicking (the vegetables) from the local market and from Balamban. I guess by starting this canteen it would make a good ecology not only for the community but for everybody,” says Buñing.
I guess we all should start becoming “budgetarians” for a healthier and longer life! /elb