Paint your way to improved health

Northern Stores launch healthy eating campaign
Northern Stores across the Nishnawbe Aski Nation territory now feature a new national campaign geared towards improving the overall health of Aboriginal Canadians.
The Paint Your Plate with Colour campaign was launched by 136 Northern and Northern Mart stores across Canada with an overall goal of encouraging individuals to make healthier choices when grocery shopping.
“What we are hoping is that it will highlight some of the choices in 20 different sections of the store,” said Suzanne Hajto, healthy eating coordinator at the North West Company, who designed the campaign over the past two years. “We want it also to allow for repeated exposure to nutrition messages. For example, one such message is: ‘Frozen (food) is just as healthy as fresh.’”
Some of the most commonly reported preventable diseases affecting Aboriginals include: type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and hypertension.
Community members face numerous challenges in remote communities to buying healthy food.
One community member from a James Bay community, who wanted her name withheld, said all too often, the fresh fruits and vegetables that arrive into the store are overripe. She cites berries, tomatoes, bananas and lettuce as being some of the overripe foods.
The most common fresh fruits stocked are apples, oranges and bananas. Sometimes strawberries, blueberries, pineapples or pears would be available. A bag of apples or oranges cost her $10 to $12 per bag. She also mentioned that yogurt, at her Northern Store, was rarely available. When it was, it cost $10-$12.
Another community member said canned or frozen items would also be near the expiry date of their shelf life or even past the expired date.
“I have seen canned baby food that was moldy,” he said.
Given the challenges to access healthy food, solutions are at the forefront of the campaign.
There are three elements to the campaign. The first is the exposure to signs encouraging healthy eating. The second involves ‘Healthy Bites’ which are recipes developed by Hajto and featured every month. Lastly, health resources available to health care workers and educators were developed that are geared toward northern populations.
Hajto said the ingredients featured in the recipes she developed will be on sale for one week of every month. It is a good time for people to stock up when the items are more affordable.
If community members find they are lacking a particular item in their stores, they can make demands as customers to have that item stocked in the store.
“They will have the power to allow it to get to the stores more often,” Hajto said.
The success of the campaign will be monitored by Hajto through community consultations this fall. She will also check the website to monitor which recipes have been downloaded or have had hits on them.
“It’s a really positive step forward that 136 stores across Canada are going to display health and nutrition messages to create a more positive nutrition environment,” she said. “We know that the healthier people are, the more healthier our communities are.”
For more information visit www.northernstores.ca/recipes.asp or www.northmart.ca/recipes.asp.