Extending healthy options for students

Parents at a Wimmera school working to remodel a sports carnival canteen menu hope to drive positive change for student outcomes.

Warracknabeal Primary School parents club wanted to provide students with a comprehensive approach to encourage healthier choices.

Club member and parent Kate Liersch reached out to health experts at Rural Northwest Health, RNH, to help develop healthier food options for the 2020 sports carnival canteen.

“There were lollies, soft drinks, pies and pasties on the menu,” she said.

“We had a chat about whether that was appropriate for a sports day – we wanted to encourage healthy eating and looked at how we could make changes.”

RNH provided food recommendations such as zucchini slice, jacket potatos and fried rice.

Ms Liersch said the focus was on the benefits of regular exercise, being sun smart and providing options so students could make their own health-conscious decisions.

“I can notice a difference in my children when they eat healthier – they have greater concentration and often their behaviour is better,” she said.

“The school already does really well with its canteen and education about healthy eating. We just wanted to reflect that in the sports canteen – we want to encourage healthy movement, healthy choices.”

Ms Liersch said it was challenging to weigh up whether students would choose to eat healthier but had confidence the changes would make a difference.

“The initial concern was that this was a big fundraiser for us – we were worried that changing the menu would mean we wouldn’t sell as much,” she said.

“But I think if you give the kids healthier options, it’s surprising how often they go for them.”

RNH guidelines work on the ‘traffic light’ system of evaluating food choices – green is ‘best choices’, amber ‘choose carefully’ and red ‘limit’.

The parents club reduced red-item options from its 2019 menu from 56 percent to 25 percent and increased amber options to 33 percent and green to 42 percent.

RNH health promotions co-ordinator Nick Wakeling said even the smallest changes influenced greater community health results.

“By providing healthier options across community activities we start to see a positive change in attitude towards what we eat and make healthier options the new norm,” he said.

“It’s fantastic to see community organisations wanting to work together to improve health outcomes.”

Principal Ben Tait said he looked forward to being able to test the new menu when the 2020 sports carnival could be rescheduled.

“It supports our goal to improve healthy lifestyles and living,” he said.