Healthy food makes us feel great. When we put the right fuel into our bodies, it helps us stay active for longer periods, improves focus and concentration, and boosts our ability to perform. This is especially important when it comes to our local sporting and recreation clubs and associations. Getting the most out of enjoying sport and physical activity extends beyond what happens on the ground, in the pool or on the track. Providing better food and drink options for your members and their families can provide great benefits for all.

A Better Choice is an initiative by Health and Wellbeing Queensland that gives canteen convenors, volunteers and committee members the tips and tools to make it easier to provide better choices at your club, regardless of the venue’s place or size.

A Better Choice aims to increase the availability and promotion of healthier food and drinks in sport and recreation clubs and associations. While change can take time, the following steps can help clubs and associations to implement A Better Choice effectively.

Step 1: Tackle change one goal at a time

Make changes over time. Use these helpful resources to start with small easy changes to improve the provision and promotion of healthy food and drinks across four areas.

• Healthy drinks
  Choose water first, limit unhealthy drinks.
• Healthy snacks
  Refuel with fruit and healthier snacks.
• Healthier meals
  Green up the menu, add healthier options and limit unhealthy ones.
• Beyond the menu
  Feature healthy options in rewards and fundraisers.

Once your club or association has made changes successfully, move onto step 2 to really lift your food and drink offerings.

Step 2: Set targets to get a better balance

The next step is to work towards the A Better Choice food and drink targets to achieve a better balance in your menu offerings. The A Better Choice food and drink targets use a traffic light system that classifies food and drinks according to their nutritional value. For retail outlets the targets are to offer:

• a minimum of 50% of food and drinks in the green category
• a maximum of 20% of food and drinks in the red category
• the remaining proportion can be food and drinks from the amber or green category.

To learn more about the targets and how to determine if food and drink options available are classified as green, amber or red refer to the A Better Choice Strategy for Sport and Recreation (PDF, 3.77MB).

How to implement change, and monitor and evaluate progress

Implementing change successfully requires careful planning, regular monitoring and evaluation, and acknowledging and celebrating progress along the way. Whilst working through Step 1 and 2 it is important to plan, act, monitor and review to stay on track.

A more detailed guide for each step is provided in the A Better Choice Strategy for Sport and Recreation (3.77 MB).