Healthy Restaurant Project makes ‘smart choices’ easier

The CNMI Non-Communicable Disease Bureau of the Division of Public Health, through a subaward from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is introducing a healthy restaurant project to encourage local restaurants to offer fresh, clearly marked healthy menu options.

According to project assistant Kaitlyn Neises-Mocanu, this effort hopes to make the healthy choice an easy choice for CNMI restaurant patrons.

Kaitlyn Neises-Mocanu

“In return for participation, restaurants receive free publicity and advertising through project outreach efforts,” she told Saipan Tribune. “Instead of talking to people one on one, we look at the bigger picture of changing the environment of where they order to help them live a healthier life.”

Although the project was initiated last November, Neises-Mocanu and CHCC dietitian Kate Campbell have already surveyed 11 restaurants on island.

“We do this to make sure the program initiatives are sustainable. We look at what is whole food and how restaurants promote their healthy food,” she added. “ It is one thing to have healthy food, but it is another thing to help people find it and make it easy for them to get.”

The Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health, or REACH, grant will fund the project until September. If it proves successful, the program will run for two more years.

Neises-Mocanu said that setting up the program well is imperative, so that it will not be burdensome for Public Health’s NCD Bureau to take over.

In addition to promoting healthy plates, the project also teams up with Northern Marianas College’s Food and Beverage Management class to design a logo for participating restaurants to use on their menu to distinctly mark their healthy dishes.

Neises-Mocanu said that even the smallest changes will make the biggest difference in people’s health.

“Restaurants can offer a healthier default side dish. Instead of offering a chicken dish with two scoops of white rice, the default can be the chicken dish with sweet potato and someone can ask for white rice as a change out. Making the healthier option the default would make it easier for people to make the healthy choice.”

The program also hopes to improve restaurants’ menus through social media. A survey posted online received 170 responses in just a few days. Majority of the responses from local restaurant patrons requested for healthier options, like salads, to be on Saipan restaurant menus.

The project, Neises-Mocanu said, is a significant one for the island community. “We all know that we have high rates of diabetes and hypertension. These are all preventable and often reversible based on healthier eating and healthier lifestyles,” she added. “That does not only cost emotional distress for families, because of relatives dying early, but it is a huge economic problem. Our economy can’t grow if we have people dying at 50 and have a lot of sick days for workers. …A healthy economy has a healthy population.”

To formally kick off the healthy restaurant project, CHCC will show its appreciation to restaurants on Saipan who are already doing their part to make the healthy choice the easy choice for their customers. CHCC CEO Esther Muña will award four “Healthy Food Champion” restaurants this week.

Rota and Tinian restaurant businesses can also take part in the initiative by contacting Neises-Mocanu through the project’s website: www.reachcnmi.wix.com/reach. She urges community members to take the healthy restaurant survey online as well at www.surveymonkey.com/s/cnmirestaurants.

The REACH grant awarded CHCC’s Public Health NCD Bureau $10,000 for the healthy restaurant project and another $10,000 toward education and enforcement efforts of the Smoke-Free Air Act of 2008.