I had the most amazing week away in Charleville this week. A big shout out to South West Queensland Health & Hospital Service and Murweh Shire Council for being a Stand for Children's Health. The Health & Hospital Service obtained funding from the Shire Council to cover the cost of my accommodation and travel to visit the area.
This year I am partnering with the 2 local primary schools and the kindergarten (ELC) for 12 months to help them put health of the school community at the heart of what they do. Last week was the start of what's going to be an incredible year for the schools in the region.
We kicked off with by hosting a combined school Teacher Professional Learning Session. Then we hosted a combined school parent engagement session, followed by incursions for all students at each of the 3 schools.
At this point, it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge how this all started. It started with one incredible lady named Vanessa. She is the Curriculum Co-ordinator at St Mary's School, and she's been following my work since we travelled Australia back in 2015.
Vanessa went about enrolling a whole host of amazing people to make this week long visit to the region happen. I'm going to shout out to all of them because something that's never happened before happened this week. I'll share more about this in a moment. These women are:
Katrina - Principal at St Mary's School
Emma - Head of Dept at Charleville State School
Karren - Principal at Charleville State School
Jessica - Director of Charleville community Kindergarten
Jenny - Health & Hospital Service
Richard - Murweh Shire Councils
The first 4 women are all different education departments. They came together for the greater good of children's health for the whole region. They agreed that they would work together to develop a common set of core food values that each of the schools world work within. These core food values are like the north star when it comes to food and health in the school. Jenny and Richard got behind their combined desire to see a change for the children in the region.
What this means is that all schools in the region will be using a common language around food and working towards making simple swaps in what they do so that children are not getting mixed messages about food.
Call me crazy but I find this so damn exciting. This is how change happens. This is how we break generational behaviour around nutrition and health.
Will it be easy? Nope. Will it happen fast? Nope. But change never is either of these things. That's why I am honoured to be partnering with each of these women and their schools for 12 months.
Our Children's Health Program is way more than a school incursion. It's not even about lunchboxes or canteen food. It's about how putting nutrition at the heart of what a school does, leads to making a lasting difference to health, learning, behaviour, resilience and waste at the school. This work starts in a school, then ripples out into homes. If you'd love us to support your school, be a Stand for Children's Health and enquire about The Children's Health Program now.
Whilst I'm talking about Charleville, it's an incredible region to visit. Here's one of the things I love the most about the area besides the people - the red earth. How stunning is the contrast of the red earth to the green bushes to the blue cloudy sky?
Now onto this weeks gift to you - 3 simple better choices and 2 great recipes - inspired by my visit to Charleville.
3 Simple Better Swaps
In Charleville, there is just one supermarket. On my first 2 days to the region, I spent a good few hours each day in the supermarket working out simple affordable swaps I could share with parents to help them make better choices for their family.
In most aisles it wasn't too difficult but the aisle below had me stumped. There really wasn't one 'bar' type food that I could say made a simple affordable swap. They were all either loaded with sugar and / or loaded with way too many ingredients. The one that was sugar free and I guess better ingredient wise, just wasn't what I would consider to be an affordable swap in comparison.
These sorts of bars are one of the most common foods in lunchboxes. As I sat in this aisle, I started to think about what I could possibly suggest to parents without telling them they had to home cook.
Here's what I came up with - more of 3 rules of thumb of for making Simple Better Swaps - for all aisles - regardless of where you live.
Choose plain over flavoured - this avoids flavour enhancers and colours, that can have an impact on asthma, eczema, behaviour, learning and sleep.
Choose savoury over sweet - this will help to avoid the glucose spike and corresponding crash in energy that tends to follow.
Swap to every second (or third) day - this reduces the frequency of consumption and therefore the potential impacts on health (particularly important for aisles like the one below where finding a better choices is difficult).