A national partnership has developed a program that provides expert nutritional knowledge for cooks and food handlers within the childcare services industry as an intervention to prevent obesity.
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Healthy Australia chief executive officer Ruby O’Rourke said the program was a way to implement good food practices for children aged between 2-5-years-old.
“The feedAustralia program bridges the gap between the world’s best nutritional expertise and the day-to-day practices of early childhood education and care providers,” Miss O’Rourke said.
“Essentially, it equips providers with an in-house dietitian.”
“Instead of just feeding children, if we educate them about food there might be more of a chance they will make better informed decisions as they grow older.”
“Children are convenience biased, and the next generation will be even more convenience biased.”
“Everything is packaged.”
The program was developed by a partnership between the University of Newcastle, Hunter New England Population Health and Healthy Australia.
“The program is about giving directors, cooks and food handlers a fail safe menu planning tool that immediately determines if each dish meets Australian Dietary Guidelines,” Miss O’Rourke said.
“As they enter their menus into the system it will give a red, green or amber alert that will indicate whether they are hitting the five food groups or show that there maybe a menu item that is too high in sugar or other ingredients and it will offer alternatives.”
The feedAustralia program’s database has over 200 recipes with around 2000 ingredients that are specific for 2-5-year-olds and it also has alerts which indicate when there are children that have food allergies.
The federal government has committed $1.08 million to help launch the feedAustralia program.
Courtney Barnes dietitian at the University of Newcastle said it was important that children developed good nutrition behaviours at a young age because it helped ensure they would continue into adulthood.
“The evidence shows that kids really do need enough energy and good nutrition to learn and develop properly and to grow on track, if they’re not able to access the good nutrition it can be hard to grow normally,” Miss Barnes said.
“It’s great because there isn't a program like this on the market that is translatable to the whole nation.”
“There are state specific programs but not one that taps into the whole nation and one that cooks and menu planners can use for free.”
The free program will be made available to early childhood education and care providers throughout the country in March this year.
Local early childhood education and care providers can become part of the program by registering at http://www.feedaustralia.org.au/.