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Cancer Council NSW Eat It To Beat It programs sign up schools to hold free workshops and sessions for parents. Their programs are evidence-based, and delivered by trained volunteers who are all determined to beat cancer.

The free sessions provide ideas and tips on: quick and easy ways to pack a healthy lunch box; boosting fruit and vegetable content for cancer prevention; and saving money on the weekly grocery shop. Favouring fresh foods over packaged goods and boosting fruit and vegetable content were easy ways to make lunch boxes budget-friendly.

A healthy lunch box includes a combination of: breads and cereals; vegetables and salad; fruit; meat and alternatives; dairy; and water. Packing something from each food group gives the lunch box an A-grade.

Eat It To Beat It’s free Fruit & Veg Sense workshops show parents how to make simple, budget-friendly changes to household meals, such as modifying a stir fry recipe to reduce expensive meat ingredients and increase cheaper vegetables.

Eating more fruit and vegetables was important for good health and cancer prevention.

“A fibre-rich diet including two serves of fruit and five serves of vegetables a day can help prevent one in six bowel cancer cases,”  said a Cancer Council NSW representative.

“Eating the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables also reduces your risk of oesophageal, lung and some mouth and throat cancers.”