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Healthier Food & Drink on offer at Polyfest

Healthier Food & Drink Options on offer at ASB Polyfest

The 2009 ASB Polyfest is set to serve up an amazing visual feast this week, when 9000 students perform traditional dance and kapa haka on five stages from 18 – 21 March at the Manukau Sports Bowl.

While the students will serve up their usual feast of colour and culture, 53 food stalls are being encouraged to make changes this year, with much healthier food & drink options on the Polyfest menu.

Three of the major sponsors of the ASB Polyfest – Counties Manukau District Health Board, Manukau City Council and SPARC are making a combined push to have healthier food and drinks available for the 85,000 people who are expected to attend the festival.

‘Let’s Beat Diabetes’ Programme, a community partnership between the Counties Manukau District Health Board, local councils, CM Active and many other community organisations, wants to create more opportunity for festival goers to enjoy healthier options at this year’s ASB Polyfest.

Rather than wave a ‘big stick’ and prescribe what stall holders can and can’t sell, they have adopted a more gentle relationship-based approach, which aims to mentor and educate food vendors in healthier ways to prepare food, and help them make changes to their menus.

The ‘Let’s Beat Diabetes Programme’ and festival organisers realise that the ASB Polyfest is a major fundraiser for many individuals and community groups, and wanted to educate them into serving healthier foods without taking away their fundraising opportunity. This year sees stall holders raising funds for their church, for trips back to the islands, to help with University fees, and for one stall-holder – raising money to pay for a headstone.

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Six Maori & Pacific Island Dieticians and Nutritionists to provided support and advice for stall-holders. One nutritionist, Ta’i Matenga Smith has encouraged a stall-holder to take fatty mutton flaps off their menu, and others to add plenty of vegetables to their chop suey, and use lite coconut cream for the raw fish. Another of the support team, Raetea Ngatama has suggested that a stall-holder use hummus instead of mayonnaise in their potato salad, and use coconut buns as an alternative to doughnuts.

There is also a strong push to have plenty of free water available during the festival, with ‘Just Water’ providing a water truck at each of the performance stages, and festival-goers encouraged to bring water bottles to fill up with free water.

There is a competition where the ten stalls with the healthiest food & drink options will receive a certificate and big footprints leading to their stall, attracting business to the “healthier stalls”. This competition will be judged by the ‘Let’s Beat Diabetes’ project manager and one of the dieticians on the Thursday (19 March) of the ASB Polyfest, with the giant footprints in place for the Friday & Saturday of the festival.

In looking at the changes, ASB Polyfest Event Director Tania Karauria said “the majority of stallholders have responded well to the ‘Buddy Programme’ provided by the ‘Let’s Beat Diabetes’ programme and it is yet another exciting facet that will add value to our young people’s event. Stallholders are seen as very much part of the festival community, with many excited at the challenge of moving into the future, with a festival that will continue to build on providing a “total” experience, with core values such as the importance of traditions and beliefs upheld through song, dance & speech, hauora – holistic approach to health and well being and education.”

So the 2009 ASB Polyfest will be a feast of colour, culture and greater opportunity for healthy choices this year, at the Manukau Sports Bowl from 18 – 21 March.

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