Asian American Health Expo 2015 Healthy Asian Recipe Contest

2015 Healthy Asian Recipe Contest

Submission Deadline Has Passed.
Contest is Closed.

Asian Center – SE MI (AC – SE MI) will offer a nutrition education project including a “Healthy Asian Recipe Contest” and a “Healthy Asian Food Expo.” The goal of this project is to promote a  healthy Asian diet to Asian American communities and the community at large.

What prompted AC – SE MI to offer this project is the high prevalence of type 2 diabetes among Asian Americans. Although everyone notices and believes that Asian Americans have lower BMIs than average Americans (about 2 units lower), Asian Americans are twice as likely to have type 2 diabetes than non-Hispanic Whites and 1.5 to 2 times more likely than their Asian counterparts living in their own countries. There are many factors contributing to this fact and we don’t know them all, but we do know that healthy eating can help prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes and some of the heart diseases. Emphasizing prevention, AC – SE MI  is committed to promoting healthy living, and nutrition education has become a very important part of its work. AC – SE MI  staff has put in a lot of effort to offer fun, interesting and entertaining ways to make nutrition education more attractive to communities.

The first project, the “Healthy Asian Recipe Contest,” was kicked off in early March, 2012 among AC – SE MI  and its partners. This program is targeted at the Asian American communities to promote healthy cooking and allow people to learn the basics of nutrients and calories. Below is the information on this contest. All non-professional cooks can participate.

Recipe Contest Criteria

  • Asian food or Asian-Western fusion food with more than 50% Asian style (judged by our Nutrition Jury)
  • Ingredients should be available in regular supermarkets
  • Easy to medium easy to prepare
  • High nutritional values
  • Good presentation
  • Good taste

Submission Criteria

  • Any non-professional cook can enter
  • One entry per contestant
  • All entries have to be written in English (may be accompanied by the preferred language) with a picture of the finished dish for submission
  • Follow common recipe format, give standard ingredient measurements; no “dash of” or “pinch of” (for calorie calculation)
  • Deadline: All entries have to be received at Asian Center – SE MI by 3/15/2015
  • Submit entries via e-mail recipe@asiancentersemi.org  or,
  • By U.S. postal mail: 24666 Northwestern Hwy, Southfield, MI 48075

Nutrition Jury

All recipe submissions will be reviewed by a group of experts in the field. The Nutrition Jury will be composed of 3 registered Asian American dietitians and 1 chef. They will be led by Dr. Cathy Jen, a professor of the Nutrition & Food Science Department at Wayne State University.

Evaluation Criteria (evaluated by the AC – SE MI Nutrition Jury):

  • Nutritional values – 40% (healthy calories, not many added calories after preparation)
  • All ingredients are purchased in regular supermarkets – 20%
  • Easy to make – 10%
  • Presentation – 10%

The remaining 20% will be based on taste, as judged by Expo participants.

Recipe Contest Finalists

After the entry deadline, the Jury will review all recipes and will eliminate those that do not meet the established criteria. Then the Jury along with ACSM staff will calculate calories for all accepted recipes using the Jury recommended software. The Jury will score the recipes using the evaluation criteria, select 20 finalists and announce them in mid April.

These 20 finalists will be invited to showcase their award-winning recipes in the May “Asian American Health Expo.” Expo attendees will vote for for their favorites, providing the final scoring for taste. (There will be another news release later about Food Expo details.)

Healthy Asian Food Expo Presentation

All 20 finalists are expected to prepare their specific dish according to their recipe and showcase the dish in the “Healthy Asian Food Expo” for the Expo attendees to taste. Quantities in the recipe have to be multiplied to make enough for 30 attendees. During the Expo, each contestant will attend his/her table and serve up to 30 Expo participants who bought tickets to taste the dish.

During the Expo, attendees can buy tickets to taste dishes. Each ticket will cost $2, and each attendee can buy up to 5 taste-voting tickets. The voting poll will be closed at 2 pm on the Expo day when taste votes will be counted. The 3 award-winners will be announced at 3 pm, followed by an award ceremony.

Money collected from the taste-voting tickets will be given to the contestant who prepared the dish. A maximum of $60 is available for every dish to help defray the cost of ingredients. The contestant should plan well to offer attendees the proper amount knowing that there will be about $60 to pay for the dish that he/she has to prepare.

Awards:

1st place – $500
2nd place – $300
3rd place – $200

To promote the contest and healthy cooking, all project partners of AC – SE MI will offer nutrition seminars in their respective community. Please contact the following organizations of your preferred community and find out when and where they will offer the nutritional seminars.

  1. Asian Center – SE MI: 248-227-4374
  2. MAI Family (Indians): Mona Walambe 248-978-4902
  3. MCWA (Chinese): Helen Shueh 248-930-8623
  4. KACCM (Korean): Won-min Park 248-672-4954
  5. PNAM (Filipino): Emma Pacris 248-698-2090
  6. VAAM (Vietnamese): Marie Huynh 586-484-2989