How close can you get to eating real food?

Franziska Spritzler, a dietitian and diabetes educator, once wrote that to “maintain good health and high quality of life,” one must follow a diet based on real food. And for her (and most dietitians), real food is an unprocessed, “single-ingredient food” which in my understanding are those that are still close to its natural state as it was harvested.

The problem in getting real food in the urban realm, however, is that there may still be a lot of organic markets in Metro Manila but they can rarely be found in business districts like Bonifacio Global City (BGC), which houses not only high-rise corporate buildings but also living spaces. How in this fast-paced lifestyle surrounded by fast-food and delivery services can you still get close to eating single-ingredient, unprocessed food?

An all-organic and local grocer called Real Food aims to solve that.

Real Food just opened its second branch at the ICON Showroom Building, 5th Ave. corner 25th Street, BGC, making their dairy-, gluten-, and preservative-free selections of food more accessible to both northerners and southerners. They opened first store at the Molito Lifestyle Mall in Muntinlupa City in 2016.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsdBWEJlT6U/

The store has the same farmhouse interiors—hardwood shelves, cascading lush greenery—like the ones in their Muntinlupa branch, only with bigger glass windows that fits well with BGC’s cool, modern buildings.

Everything on sale are harvested and delivered daily to the stores by Real Food’s partner farms from Tagaytay and Cavite. The owners also make sure that produce native in certain provinces will come directly from farmers in those areas, like fresh honeycomb from Bukidnon and tart raspberries from Mt. Banahaw between Laguna and Quezon.

They also encourage other local manufacturers to tap them for a partnership, specifically those who are advocates of eco-friendly lifestyles.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BrFQh7JFiEH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Real Food BGC is open daily from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Header image courtesy of Real Food

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