Stonerweslestter

August 2013

Peppimenarti Store Healthy Food Shelf
Store managers Dave and Davena have been very busy since taken up the reigns at Peppimenarti community store last year. The store has played a crucial role in helping prevent and manage chronic disease, through working closely with the clinic, nutritionist and community to make healthier food choices easier and more affordable. During this time, the store has seen fruit and vegetable sales double.

Store Manager Dave with the fruit and vegetable fridge at Peppimenarti Store.

Store Worker Malcolm restocking the shelves at Peppimenarti Store.

Peppimenarti store have also been quick to respond to new initiatives, such as implementing a ‘Healthy Food Stand’ within the store a few months ago. The Healthy Food Stand features a range of low Glycaemic Index (GI), low fat, low sugar and salt reduced products, including wholegrains, legumes, healthy biscuits and dried fruit. Items on the healthy stand are selling well and need to be restocked regularly. The store will shortly add a fridge to be dedicated to refrigerated healthy range products.
Other strategies that Peppimenarti Store have instigated is to ensure that healthy items are prominently placed and attract attention as soon as you enter the store, which has also helped with selling more healthy food. Their fridge also has an amazing variety of fresh and affordable fruit and vegetables that would be hard to find in a much larger community store. They have also worked closely with the community to promote healthy food and explain how these products assist with maintaining a healthy weight and good blood glucose control.
The Peppimenarti Store have demonstrated that being a strong advocate for nutrition and healthy eating can work very well with the store being financially viable. These initiatives have proven to be good investments economically and the community have won twice with a highly profitable store and a much improved food supply.
Peppimenarti Store would like to thank Robert Loughnan, Managing Director of Regional Merchandising Solutions for his dedication and involvement in getting this very important and successful project underway.

Product Profile: Soft Drinks
Many people enjoy a cold soft drink on a hot day but did you know that one can of soft drink can contain up to 10 teaspoons of sugar? That means, if someone drinks one can of soft drink each day for a year, they consume an extra 14 kilograms of sugar! All this extra sugar comes with no nutrients, such as vitamins or minerals that make your body strong and healthy; but it has been found to lead to overweight and obesity; diabetes; dental caries, and other health issues.

The store can play a part in helping customers to make healthy drink choices without impacting sales.

Swap soft drink for water

Some ideas include:

Making high sugar soft drinks harder to
find - place diet soft drinks and water at eye level in the most accessible fridge or shelf.
Support community events by supplying refrigerated water.
If possible, keep diet drinks and water refrigerated, but leave high sugar soft drinks out of the fridge.
Source and supply a cheap brand of water.
Significantly increase the price of high sugar drinks and reduce the price of diet alternatives.
Promote the price difference between diet drinks and high sugar soft drinks by placing shelf talkers in front of cheaper drinks.

Use Thumbs Up signage to promote water as a drink of first choice through in-store displays.
Display the ‘swap soft drinks for water’ posters – these could be developed by the community/school or use the ones supplied through the Department of Health.
Discuss the need to discourage purchases of high sugar soft drinks with all Store staff and secure their support.
Share information about how much sugar sweetened drinks you are ordering/selling. Community leaders are worried about the health of people and often have their own ideas on how to replace the sale of these lines with healthier choices.

August 2013

Talking About Shelf Labels

Talking About Shelf Labels: A resource package for remote community stores is designed to help communities promote healthy food items in stores to help guide food choice and improve health and wellbeing.
The resource package features a flipchart and informational booklet to equip communities
to develop, implement, maintain and evaluate a project to create unique shelf labels to show which store foods and drinks are healthy choices. Shelf labels can also remind people how important it is to eat healthy food.
This package has been developed by Menzies School of Health Research in collaboration with The Fred Hollows Foundation, and many stakeholders including four Indigenous communities across Arnhem Land, Cape York, Central Australia and the Torres Strait Islands.

This package can help your community:
Engage and involve communities to create the best health message for their community
Make health messages clear and easy to understand
Promote good partnerships with community store staff
Build good systems for monitoring and maintaining store shelf labels, and
Implement practical training ideas.

This package is ideal for remote nutritionists, health promotion staff or other health professionals, store or community workers.

This resource is available to download from www.menzies.edu.au/resources

Easy takeaway recipe:
Tuna and Corn Mornay (serves 10)

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon oil
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped 2 brown onions, chopped
425g can tuna in brine or springwater, drained
1 can reduced salt corn kernels, drained 1 can sliced green beans
1 packet chicken noodle soup 1 cup milk powder

Steps:

Heat oil in wok, add garlic, onion and stirfry.
Add tuna and fry until beginning to brown.
Add corn and beans (including liquid)
Add chicken noodle soup packet, milk powder and continue to stir until mixture thickens.
Add water if required to prevent mixture from burning.
Serve with boiled rice, pasta or bread.

Recipe adapted from Flour Drum Stove Cookbook

This newsletter is produced every two months by the Department of Health to share stories, ideas and information amongst remote stores in the Northern Territory.  Contributions are welcome.  Please email tamie.needham@nt.gov.au