National Nutrition Week 2013

13-19 October 2013

National Nutrition Week raises awareness and supports the community to look at how food and lifestyle choices impact on health.

The food and lifestyle choices we make impact on both our health, and the health of our planet. With childhood obesity rates now around 25% and with Australians identified as being among the highest producers of waste globally, we need to address these issues urgently. Nutrition Australia raises awareness and supports the community to look at these challenges during National Nutrition Week.

National Nutrition Week always includes World Food Day, and since 2010 has also incorporated Nude Food Day.

This years Theme:
Project Dinnertime – Cook, Eat, Enjoy

What is Project Dinnertime?

Project Dinnertime is a food skills program encompassing the overarching themes: Cook, Eat, Enjoy. With a major aim to improve knowledge, skills and confidence in the kitchen, Project Dinnertime will empower people to prepare more meals from home more often.

Project Dinnertime addresses the overarching themes as follows:

Cook: Develop skills and confidence to cook meals from scratch. This includes learning basic food safety principles, following recipes, and learning how to identify healthy recipes based on ingredients and preparation methods. There is a strong emphasis on choosing budget conscious meals with a focus on seasonal variety.

Eat: Appreciate the tastes and textures of wholesome foods. Develop a greater depth of knowledge in reading and understanding food labels and making healthy choices in the supermarket.

Enjoy: Experience the celebration and social/emotional connectedness that food brings. This can build and strengthen family relationships around the dinner table.

Throughout National Nutrition Week 2013 (October 13 -19), Nutrition Australia is calling out to all families and communities to think about how they prepare their meals and to take steps to reduce their reliance on convenient or take-away options in a bid to improve their long-term health. Nutrition Australia ACT will also be launching the Project Dinnertime website where families and community groups can seek further advice and support to help ‘bring back’ cooking skills and maximise individuals abilities to prepare food with confidence.

In the lead up to and during National Nutrition Week, the Project Dinnertime Kit will be available to freely download from the Nutrition Australia website. The Kit will include a range of fact sheets and recipes that align with the Project Dinnertime concept. This will include information on:

cooking on a budget;
making healthy food choices the easy choice;
kitchen and pantry basics and;
recipe ‘building blocks’ which will give consumers the concept of a basic recipe structure which can be easily modified to suit individual tastes, cultures and nutritional requirements.