Shop Smart.
A smart way of spending your money on food
to balance your diet and your food budget.
About FOODcents
FOODcents aims to teach people how to get value for money and achieve a balanced diet.
The FOODcents model recommends spending money across the food groups in set proportions, spending the most on fruits, vegetables and plain cereal foods.
Spending with FOODcents ensures that most money is spent on the foods we should eat most of and least being spent on the foods we should eat least.
Interested in learning more?
The following organisations in Western Australia run community workshops and/or advisor training on nutrition and food budgeting based on the FOODcents principles.
The Cancer Council WA conducts FOODcents advisor training, available for all health and community professionals. Community FOODcents workshops are available in regional areas and cover healthy eating, food budgeting, cooking and a supermarket tour. Participation is open to all who wish to attend.
Regional workshops can be organised for the following regional centers: Broome, Karratha, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie, Midland, Bunbury and Albany.
Contact us if you would like to attend a community workshop or advisor training.
The Cancer Council WA and Diabetes WA have been contracted by the Department of Health WA to coordinate the FOODcents program by maintaining resources including this website and coordinating the FOODcents network.
The Foodbank WA Food Sense Program provides Foodcents education, training and resources developed and adapted for our statewide school and community agency networks. It supplements the original Foodcents budgeting program with visual resources, simplified accurate cost per kilo calculations and comparisons. The cooking component includes food and recipe costing and the development of the basic food preparation and cooking skills required to prepare a variety of “eat most” foods. The programs aim is to increase the knowledge, skills and intention to source, prepare and consume a variety of “eat most” foods, and covers basic nutrition and food preparation principles, food budgeting, food costing, taste discernment and food security.
The program actively advocates and supports edible school and community garden projects and supports the development of community kitchen projects. The program is available to school communities and community agencies registered with Foodbank WA, and as professional development for associated organisations and health and community professionals working with groups vulnerable to food security in the WA community.The Foodbank WA Food Sense Program is part of our Healthy Food For All project which delivers nutrition and physical activity health promotion programs to schools registered in our School Breakfast Program.
The Foodbank WA School Breakfast Program was established in 2001, and currently supports and works with over 200 school communities in metropolitan Perth and regional and remote areas of WA.
For more information contact Irene Verteramo on (08)9258 9277 
The Australian Red Cross FOODcents Program engages families, adults, young people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and Cultural and Linguistically Diverse communities. This accessible healthy lifestyle program addresses the risk factors related to the prevention of chronic diseases, in order to assist participants to achieve improved health and wellbeing outcomes. The program can be delivered in groups or individually in a participant’s home.
The program has a health eating, healthy weight and physical activity focus, which still enables participants to learn how to make changes to the way they allocate their food budget to achieve a healthy diet/lifestyle, to save money on their food bill and to increase their economic self-reliance.
Acceptance onto the program is through referral from a health professional or community agency. Participants can also self-refer.
For more information contact Barbara Hollin on (08) 9225 1984
Gosnells Women’s Health Service is a not-for-profit community organisation staffed by women under the direction of a voluntary committee. The services offered include medical, counselling, support groups, library and health promotion.
With a focus on healthy eating, budgeting and food labels, each session also encourages the development of cooking skills as participants cook a healthy, low cost meal to share. The program is targeted at women living in and around the Gosnells area, however, there are no restrictions. The course costs $20 for four sessions which covers the cost of consumables.
For more information contact Kirsty Cave on (08) 9490 2258
Page last updated Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:54 am