While research­ing this top­ic, I came across many arti­cles that pro­mot­ed the ben­e­fits of healthy eat­ing, includ­ing the 5 + 2 mantra for fresh fruit and veg­eta­bles. This is fine in the­o­ry. How­ev­er, it remind­ed me of a car­rot I picked up in a remote desert com­mu­ni­ty store that had more flex­i­bil­i­ty than a yoga teacher and about as much nutri­tion as an old shoe.

Look­ing after our nutri­tion is one of the three pil­lars of health, well­be­ing and self care (along with sleep and exer­cise). Attend­ing to this when liv­ing and work­ing in rur­al and remote com­mu­ni­ties can be extreme­ly chal­leng­ing when access to fresh foods can be like find­ing a nee­dle in a haystack.

Research has shown that good gut health can affect our moods, and in fact the gut is often called the ​‘sec­ond brain’ as the GI tract influ­ences the pro­duc­tion of neu­ro­trans­mit­ters that car­ry mes­sages from our gut to our brain (e.g. Sero­tonin and Dopamine). There­fore, apart from the phys­i­cal ben­e­fits of healthy eat­ing, pro­vid­ing our body with healthy food sets us up for few­er mood fluc­tu­a­tions, improved focus and an over­all bet­ter out­look on life.

Foods high in processed sug­ar, while easy to access and eat, can trick our brains into releas­ing chem­i­cals that we may tem­porar­i­ly need. How­ev­er, over time con­sump­tion can lead to anx­i­ety, exces­sive tired­ness, and wors­en­ing of mood dis­or­der symp­toms, all of which con­tribute to burnout.

Think about your body like a car. Put ​‘pre­mi­um petrol’ in and you will get good mileage and per­for­mance out of it. If you con­sis­tent­ly put low­er pre­mi­um fuel in, it will be dam­aged over time by impu­ri­ties. For those of you liv­ing in remote and iso­lat­ed Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, food secu­ri­ty issues have been on the Government’s radar since 2009.

CRANAplus is aware of the chal­lenges fac­ing these areas and has made a sub­mis­sion to the Inquiry into Food Prices and Food Secu­ri­ty in Remote Indige­nous Com­mu­ni­ties, with rec­om­men­da­tions, as just one way to advo­cate for Gov­ern­ment and Com­mu­ni­ty to address these.

The price of healthy and/​or fresh food is often high­er and sup­ply can pose chal­lenges, but there are still things we can do.

Eat­ing the best we can in rur­al and remote areas requires us to think out­side the box, put in prepa­ra­tion time and make com­pro­mis­es.

Here are nine hints on eat­ing as best as we can in the cir­cum­stances we find our­selves in.

1. Have a big cook up

Some fresh fruit and veg­eta­bles may be hard­er to find, par­tic­u­lar­ly at cer­tain times of the year. When avail­able, buy what­ev­er you can afford. Cook up fruit and veg and freeze to use lat­er. Stew apples or stone fruits; make veg­gie soups and toma­to-based sauces for pas­ta, meat or veg­gie dish­es. This is a fan­tas­tic option when you’re tired and can’t be both­ered cook­ing, and you have whole­some foods pre­pared in the freez­er. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can do a big cook up before you leave, freeze down into small­er con­tain­ers, and take them with you (where pos­si­ble and with­in weight limits).

2. Make health­i­er choices

If fresh fruit and veg aren’t avail­able, buy frozen and canned ones as sub­sti­tutes. Avoid those that con­tain added sug­ar and/​or salt. Read food labels to check.

3. Yum­my home-made snacks

Store bought or ser­vo snacks can be high in processed sug­ar, so choose nuts or make some home-made bliss balls or ener­gy bars. Most ingre­di­ents should be avail­able and these will bal­ance out your sug­ar lev­els over the day, so you shouldn’t expe­ri­ence ​‘hang­er attacks’.

4. Brush up on your bush tucker

Aus­tralian bush foods can be sea­son­al, plen­ti­ful, read­i­ly acces­si­ble and full of nutri­ents. Speak to Elders in your area to get per­mis­sion, find out where they may be locat­ed and gath­er ideas about what is avail­able, when and how to use them. Many top chefs use bush foods in their recipes now and pub­lish them online. Local health ser­vices may even have recipe books or hand­outs using local bush foods. Incor­po­rat­ing local bush foods is an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with the local Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty. Going out to col­lect them as a group can help build rela­tion­ships that can also assist you with your work, get you out into nature and help you feel less isolated.

5. Use reduced fat milks

While ​‘fresh’ milk can be hard to come by, some of the UHT milks come in low-fat or skim and taste rel­a­tive­ly okay (it’s an acquired taste that’s easy to get used to when there is no alter­na­tive). Plus, you can stock up on them and they’ll keep in the cup­board. Also, if you can make a trip to a big­ger town, buy fresh milk and freeze if you have freez­er space.

6. Choose grain breads

Multi­grain bread can be hard­er to come by in com­mu­ni­ty stores, but you will gen­er­al­ly find whole­meal avail­able. If pos­si­ble, buy up grain breads in big­ger towns, then freeze them. Often, those big­ger towns will have them avail­able in the freez­er sections.

7. Speak to the local store manager

Some­times they may be hap­py to order cer­tain foods if you ask and they think they can sell any excess of them. Be aware that they can’t con­trol the qual­i­ty of fresh foods that arrive.

8. Put in a ​‘sta­tion’ order

Often big retail­ers in larg­er towns of remote areas will do a sig­nif­i­cant order that is deliv­ered by the mail plane. Get togeth­er with your col­leagues and put in an order of fresh food and ingre­di­ents. Depend­ing on where you live, this could arrive once a week or a cou­ple of times a week. Give the super­mar­ket a call and ask how they can help you.

9. Find a reli­able source of drink­ing water

Even though you may get access to good food, often the water source lets you down and gives you the runs. Or, it can taste ​‘less fresh’ than in big­ger cen­tres. If you’re unsure about the water sup­ply, boil water to ensure it’s safe to cook with and drink, then keep it in the fridge.

While eat­ing well is one of the three pil­lars of health and well­be­ing, we don’t always treat it as a pri­or­i­ty when we are work­ing in a remote or iso­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ty. Yet we need to pri­ori­tise it, and in so doing, pri­ori­tise our­selves.

Put some time and effort into think­ing about what food you can take remote (based on trans­port options to get to your des­ti­na­tion), what you can make and store, and how long you are there. Make the time to take all of this into con­sid­er­a­tion, plan and, if pos­si­ble, make and freeze meals.

Remem­ber, it pays to be flex­i­ble with what we can use and access whilst try­ing not to use too many processed goods. This will assist with keep­ing our sug­ars sta­ble and look­ing after our well­be­ing by pro­vid­ing good nourishment.

Although it will take a bit of extra time and plan­ning, you are worth every minute of it.

Dr Nicole Jef­fery-Dawes
Senior Psy­chol­o­gist

Ref­er­ences:

• Williams, H. Avoid burnout: self-care strate­gies for nurs­es. Health Times. Last Updat­ed: 16-08-2021
• Sel­hub, E. Nutri­tion­al psy­chi­a­try: Your
  brain on food. Har­vard Healthy pub­lish­ing, Har­vard Med­ical School. March 26, 2020.
• Depart­ment of Health. Healthy weight guide for peo­ple liv­ing in rur­al and remote areas. Accessed 10 Sep 2021 at https://healthyweight. health​.gov​.au/​w​p​s​/​p​o​r​t​a​l​/​H​o​m​e​/​h​e​l​p​i​n​g​-​h​a​n​d​/​d​i​f​f​e​r​e​n​t​-​n​e​e​d​s​/​f​o​r​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​l​i​v​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​r​u​r​a​l​-​a​n​d​-​r​e​m​o​t​e​-​areas