Green Monday's David Yeung strikes another blow for healthy eating
With a restaurant guide under his belt, a website on vegetarian recipes up his sleeve and expansion plans for Green Monday in full swing, there's no letting up for healthy eating advocate David Yeung, writes Elaine Yau
A vegetarian for 13 years, David Yeung finds it difficult to eat green in Hong Kong. To give passionate vegetarians like him better choices for dining places, Yeung wrote a book highlighting good vegetarian restaurants and giving tips on how to eat green.
Go Green 88 Restaurant Guide, published in January, is among the ventures the 37-year-old has launched to expand his business in promoting a green and healthy lifestyle.
In 2012, together with Social Ventures Hong Kong founder Francis Ngai Wah-sing, Yeung set up Green Monday, a non-profit social enterprise which promotes eating healthier foods and encourages people to adopt a vegetarian diet every Monday.
We want to provide a one-stop solution to people who want to eat healthier
Within two years, Green Monday has achieved considerably boosted interest vegetarianism in the city. More than 1,000 restaurants, including Cafe de Coral and Caffe Habitu, now offer vegetarian options on Mondays. The scheme has also been well received by schools and students, a good thing considering Hong Kong children have an obesity rate of 26 per cent among boys, and 16 per cent among girls. Eighteen school lunch suppliers, covering 500 schools and 400,000 students, have pledged support.
Not content with this success, Yeung says they will soon launch an online platform featuring vegetarian recipes, videos on how to make vegetarian dishes, a list of suppliers of vegetarian food in the city and healthy eating tips.
"We want to provide a one-stop solution to people who want to eat healthier," says Yeung, who is also chairman of high-end optical store Visual Culture and multi-label fashion shop Shine.
"People often have no idea about how to cook vegetarian meals at home. They think vegetarian meals mean only vegetables and salads. There are lots of other food ingredients on offer like mushrooms, nuts, seeds and soya products."