MPOC which stands for Malaysian Palm Oil Council has taken it upon itself to educate the world about the benefits of Palm Oil. They do this by conducting fun events! They organized a food hunt on the famous Church Street, in Bengaluru. This food hunt was a competition amongst a few active food bloggers. 4 Teams of 4 members took part in 5 contests and at the end of it all, the winning team walked away with a huge goodie bag containing some of the tastiest confectionaries, all containing Palm Oil!

The goodies 🙂

All of these things that you so relish everyday, contain Palm Oil!

The winning team 🙂

The 4 contests were :
1. Blind Food Tasting
2. Salad Making Contest
3. Speed Paan eating
4. Palm Oil Quiz
5. The Dart Game

Each of the contests started with a clue! The clue would be in the form of a crossword. The answer to the crossword puzzle would be the next destination on Church Street! All the teams were busy running around Church Street guessing restaurants and reaching there first. There were points for reaching first at each of the correct venues.

Blind Food Tasting

The Blind tasting event was held at Oh Calcutta.

All the participants were blindfolded and a dish was kept on our table to taste. It was quite difficult finding where the dish was on the table and pass that around to other team members! Little did I know that without looking, it’s so difficult to use a spoon to take a bite! The contest here was to list down all the ingredients of the dish we tasted. The team which guessed the highest number of correct items would win. My team got 30 ingredients and we won this contest 🙂 The dish was a vegetable curry.

Salad Making Contest

The ingredients:

Me clicking some snaps 🙂

Pravin(Pheno)’s team!

Nameesh’s team!

Naveen’s team!

The Salad making contest was held at one of the trendiest pubs in Bangalore, Hoppipola. We were given all the common ingredients that go into making a salad. We were asked to create the best salad by using only the ingredients that we’d prefer.

The salads from each of the teams were judged by a renowned chef and Bhavna Shah herself! The salads were scored on presentation, choice of ingredients and taste. Not sure which team won this contest. But we had a lot of fun 🙂

Speed Paan Eating

This contest was a fairly easy one that was held at Empire restaurant. All each team had to do was to nominate one member and that person had to chew down an entire paan as quick as possible. I mean Empire has some of the best treats to offer, why pick paan ? 🙂 I would have loved to gorge on their famous shawarma rolls!

Palm Oil Quiz

The palm oil quiz was probably the toughest one to crack! This contest was held inside a gastropub by the name Russh. All those facts mentioned by Bhavna during the lecture session in the beginning, was put to test. We all had come to the venue early morning and were pretty much sleeping through the session 🙂
Nonetheless, we all did a splendid job of using the smartphones to get the answers online 🙂

The Dart Game

This was a not so simple game of darts! The chances of hitting the bulls eye on a dart board is pretty much unrealistic 😉 Each and every person struggled here. None of the folks who participated that day would ever make it to the All India Darts Association 🙂
Our team was lucky enough to land 2 darts on the board and managed to win this round as well!

All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy. Let’s get to understand a bit about MPOC and Palm Oil 🙂

MPOC’s mission statement

To promote the market expansion of Malaysian palm oil and its products by enhancing the image of palm oil and creating better acceptance of palm oil through awareness of various technological and economic advantages (techno-economic advantages) and environmental sustainability.

BENEFITS OF PALM OIL

1. Palm oil is a type of vegetable oil, making it cholesterol free. It helps raise beneficial HDL-cholesterol level and has a neutral effect on blood cholesterol in the body.
2. Palm oil is rich in antioxidants Vitamin E tocotrienols.
3. Palm oil has a balanced ratio of unsaturated and saturated fatty acids.
4. Palm oil is easily digested, absorbed and utilised as a source of energy. It also promotes the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.
5. Palm oil is free of harmful trans-fat. It is semi-solid at room temperature; eliminating the need for hydrogenation, a process which results in the formation of trans fatty acids.
6. Red palm oil is an excellent source of pro-Vitamin A carotenoids. It has 15 times more carotenoids than carrots and 50 times more than tomatoes.
7. Palm oil is stable at high temperature, making it ideal for deep frying. It imparts a much desired taste neutrality in fried food.
8. Palm oil is versatile. It is used as cooking oil either directly or in blended form, and in the manufacture of ice-cream, creamer, shortening, margarine, vegetable ghee and specialty fats.
9. Palm oil is able to prolong shelf life of manufactured products as it is oxidative resistant.
10. Palm oil is generally cheaper than the other healthier oils.

The four teams and the members were:

1. Nameesh’s team: Nameesh, Noor, Navneeth, Sakhi, Mahima
2. Naveen’s team: Naveen, Ashmitha, Chaitra, Honey
3. Rohit’s team: Rohit, Dushyant, Kanika
4. Pheno’s team: Pravin, Poojitha, Nikita, MadrasiDeepa

Bhavna Shah from MPOC was jovial and answered all our questions about Palm oil very patiently and in a humorous manner!
Priyanka Patel and Rauf from Six Sigma Events organized this event very well. All the 5 contests involved a lot of logistics and partnerships with the participating restaurants and this couldn’t have happened without their diligent work.
I thank these 3 people for bringing so much joy to all us food bloggers, on an otherwise dull Sunday morning 🙂

Bhavna in White and Black. Priyanka in red.

Learn More about MPOC via their social media handles:
Twitter : http://twitter.com/thinkpalmoil
Facebook : http://bit.ly/MPOCIndiaFB
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/thinkpalmoil/
Email : info@mpoc.org.in
Website : http://www.mpoc.org.in