Multicultural Health Week in NSW: Celebrating the different cultures through family lunchboxes

What do you usually have in your lunchbox? Healthy multicultural family lunchboxes are the focus of this year's Multicultural Health Week in New South Wales.

What's for your lunch? A healthy multicultural lunchbox can help you and your family have plenty of energy to work, learn and play during the day. Credit: ckstockphoto / weewendy / junpinzon / vaaseenaa (via Envato)

Key Points

• NSW has over 8.5 million people who come from over 310 different cultures and speak multiple languages.
• This year's Multicultural Health Week in NSW focuses on the variety of healthy foods with multicultural family lunchboxes.
• With the theme 'Celebrate culture through food with multicultural family lunchboxes', it is important that everyone always add vegetables and fruits to their lunchboxes and drink a lot of water to stay healthy.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

Healthy multicultural lunchboxes celebrates the multicultural community of NSW

14:01

Play

"We want to celebrate food because that's what we do... where we can keep healthy and we thought with multicultural family lunch boxes, it's not just about children, but it's about the adults as well, where we can pack our lunches during the day, during lunchtime," Jesusa Helaratne, Deputy Director ng NSW Multicultural Health Communication Service points out.

This 2024, the NSW Multicultural Health Week focuses on multicultural food available to people to help them stay healthy.

The theme "Celebrate culture through food with multicultural family lunchboxes" emphasises celebrating the state's multicultural community through family lunchboxes from different cultures.

Add a variety of vegetables and fruits to make lunchboxes tasty and healthy which can help lower your risk of cancer and chronic illnesses like heart disease. Credit: Annalyn Violata/SBS Filipino

"We have tapped with Adam Liaw [chef, TV personality and author], his popularity and engagement with the community. He was able to do such a great job in developing recipes for the community," Jess Helaratne reveals.

"Like other cultures, we Filipinos, love lunch boxes. It's about diversity and diversity food."

She also fondly reminisces about what she used to have in her lunchbox when she was young.

"I grew up in Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby and my mum would send me rice with adobo and some vegetables. What you eat at home can influence what you eat with other people."

In an interview with SBS Filipino during the launch of Multicultural Health Week, NSW Health Secretary Susan Pearce AM highlights how fortunate NSW is to be enriched by its diverse cultures, which greatly influence the variety of food available in the state.

"We're so lucky. We've got so many multicultural influences on the food that we eat and importantly that we're talking about health and how we can make ourselves as individuals really healthy in our communities."

The Health Secretary emphasises the importance of supporting the health of the multicultural community, noting that a healthy community significantly enhances the state's overall health system and benefits Australia as a whole.

"We have a big population here in NSW and of course, the issue for us is that if our communities become unhealthy, not only is that terrible for the individuals, but it's really going to create a big impact on our health system."

"We're a very busy health system, so our goal has to be to make our communities as healthy as possible so that we can reduce the burden on the health system and make sure we've got people who live full and healthy lives."

Ms Pearce also expresses gratitude for the diverse food brought and shared by each community.

"Big thank you to the multicultural community of NSW. Where would we be without you? I'd be stuck with boring old Vegemite sandwiches that I had when I was a kid."

"From our perspective, it is such a great privilege to have the influence of multicultural communities in our society for many reasons. Nonetheless, the wonderful food."