Healthy food delivery services helped Malaysians lose weight and get fit during the pandemic
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Loading... - Cecile Sanchez
- 18 Mar 2022
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There is nothing quite like an infectious virus-turned-global-pandemic to force people to dramatically transform their lives. For millions of denizens around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic has ripped through predictable daily routines like a tornado and became both a wake-up call and a call to action.
And nowhere has this translated more palpably than in the arena of health. While being physically active is one component of this, eating healthy is just as – if not more important – in ensuring that people are able to live their healthiest lives.
And the data seems to indicate that the pandemic caused a seismic shift in eating patterns in Malaysia, beginning with the first movement control order (MCO) in March 2020 when fear and paranoia were at an all-time high.
In fact, the results of the MyNutriLife Covid-19 online survey uncovered that during the MCO, 41% percent of respondents perceived their eating patterns to be healthier.
This is particularly heartening, given that data from the 2019 National Health and Morbidity Survey showed that 50% of the adult population in Malaysia is either overweight or obese.
In reality though, eating healthy is easier said than done. The vagaries of daily life – whether that is the stress of working, raising a family, commuting or an overall lack of time – can cumulatively make the task of preparing healthy meals virtually impossible. The other big roadblock is that many people simply don’t know what constitutes a healthy meal in the first place.
Which is why an increasing number of Malaysians have turned to the services of healthy food delivery services – especially those that offer portion-controlled meals alongside weight loss and fitness maintenance plans – to kickstart their health journeys.
“Before the pandemic, our growth was quite stable – every year we had 30% to 50% growth. And 90% of our sales came from corporate events, so we didn’t really focus on individuals.
“When the MCO first started, companies shut down so I expected our sales to be about 10% of what we were previously doing, but instead orders shot up by over 200% - it was totally beyond my expectation,” says Shyan Ow, the founder of healthy food delivery service GoClean, which has been around for eight years.
According to Ow, much of this interest can be attributed to the fact that during the various lockdowns, people spent a lot of time at home and started focusing on their eating habits. Many consequently discovered health coaches on social media channels and started emulating what they taught, which means the healthy eating habit developed very, very quickly.
Ow’s views are echoed by the ebullient Samantha Ng, the co-founder of Wise Crafters, one of the first healthy food delivery services in Malaysia to offer personalised plant-based meal plans.
“I think the pandemic has really helped businesses like ours a lot, because healthy food delivery services offer a convenient solution as more and more people embrace food delivery.
“And on top of that, people have definitely become more health-conscious, so these targeted portion-controlled nutritionist-backed meal deliveries are becoming more and more popular as opposed to conventional healthy food, because businesses like ours offer functional meals that meet people’s health goals,” she says. Read More...
