Motivating healthy eating the easy, tasty way
A couple of years ago, Chaiyatas Atisiriboon was a top young executive at one of the country's leading hospitals. Today his schedule is even busier with a health project that keeps him occupied almost 20 hours a day.
Chaiyatas Atisiriboon, founder of Veggio, a homegrown brand specialising in pure fruit and vegetable drinks.Sourcing, blending and tasting have become a new routine that the new entrepreneur hopes will help motivate Thai people to eat more healthily.
"Most Thais want a lifestyle that promotes wellbeing but they're not very committed. When we try to eat healthily, we do it on and off. One thing is because so-called healthy food is usually not quite palate pleasing. Apparently, it doesn't encourage people to continue their health-conscious diet regime," said the 38-year-old founder of Veggio, a homegrown brand that specialises in pure fruit and vegetable drinks.
Raised in a food-orientated, Thai-Chinese family, Chaiyatas, the youngest of seven siblings, has observed the benefits of a good dietary regime (and also the harm of a bad one) for all his life. His septuagenarian mother, whose diet is comprised mostly of fish, tofu, fresh vegetables and fruits, is still very healthy and active, giving him great inspiration why people should eat well.
"My mother is avidly health-conscious. She always avoids salt, sugar and oil and she drinks plenty of unseasoned vegetable broth everyday because it's rich in vitamins and minerals."
During his years as a marketing guru in the medical field, Chaiyatas realised that, outside his home, eating habits of most people are dire.
"When I was in the hospital business, I had to study clients' health statistics. Regardless of age or financial status, everyone has serious health problems hidden inside their body.
"And it's very scary to see that the number of young people afflicted with a terminal disease is rising.
"Terrifyingly, the number is almost catching up that of elderly people. I believe that's due to their unbalanced eating habits," said the business graduate who is also a regular gym-goer.
With a dream of seeing healthy food products outnumber their less-beneficial counterparts in the market, Chaiyatas decided to launch Veggio.
The brand actually started off at the beginning of 2011 with a variety of homemade fruit-based salad dressings. This was followed by a distinctive line of vegetable soup, which is made with 32 kinds of certified organic vegetables and without any flour or dairy products.
Coming in a bottle and intended to be consumed chilled, the drinking soup simply presents cold-crushed vegetables, flavoured with natural seasoning formulated to satisfy the taste buds of most consumers.
"The feedback for the vegetable soup was amazing. It's confirmed my belief that Thais are health-conscious.
"Many customers love it because they believe it helps complement their insufficient intake of vegetables. It serves those who don't like to eat vegetables, especially young children.
Veggio products are available at Seri Market on the ground floor of Paradise Park shopping centre and at Siam Paragon’s food hall. For more information, call 081-615-2992.
"I don't mean to say that it is as wholesome as eating whole fresh vegetables, but at least for people who normally don't consume vegetables, it's better drinking this than not.
"The soup was made according to a basic nutritional understanding that people should eat various types of vegetables daily.
"For me, it's like eating jub chai [Chinese-style braised vegetable soup] but without the meat and oil."
At the end of last year, Chaiyatas launched a colourful collection of drinking yoghurts made with organically grown vegetables and fruits and homemade yoghurt.
With various choices of flavours including kiwi, apple, mangosteen, berries and passionfruit, the lusciously thick smoothie proved a great success.
The yoghurt line was followed by a lighter and more refreshing selection of homemade fruit cider, which is also very popular especially among women.
"I think people should lead a healthy lifestyle everyday," the emerging entrepreneur said. "But if they cannot do it on a daily basis, at least they should have a well-balanced diet four or five times a week."