A supermarket with a conscience?
In a practical community approach to healthcare, the Roebourne Supply Mart has been colour coded in a bid to make healthy eating choices easier.
Jacinta Freeman, a regional education officer from The Cancer Council said the project is a “good opportunity” to create a model that may also work in other communities.
Roebourne is around 2 hours inland from Port Hedland in the Pilbara, making it an excellent test case.
Students from the Combined Universities Centre for Rural Health have collaborated with local community members and health care workers through Mawarnkarra Health Services amongst others to create easily identifiable healthy areas.
The colours are taken from the Healthy Yirramugadoo Plate, part of a five year program run through the Roebourne Primary School to empower children with the basics of healthy eating. This involves not only getting the portion sizes right but mixing a broad range of food groups together to create a balanced diet. For the parents out there, this involves eating well, not eating less!
Signage points diabetics in the right direction of products that are more suitable for diabetics. Footprints on the floor lead to the healthier areas of the store that are marked with coloured dots near the price tag relating to which food group they belong to. Posters of the food groups make it easy to see how much of a product can be eaten before it becomes unhealthy.
Beth Smith, a joint co-ordinator of the Building Healthy Yirramugadoo’s project has been involved for the last five years and said “it’s a great initiative and it’s rewarding to see it happening at long last.”
Signage within the store has been painted by local artists, and entries from a poster competition from the primary school have been displayed throughout the shop.
The project takes a holistic aim towards combating diabetes and protecting future generations from preventable illnesses such as heart disease, cancer and renal disease.
