Doctors take obesity fight to supermarkets

Irvine: Enter a US supermarket and the dilemma is all-too common: Will what I buy be healthy? Fattening? A substitute? That’s when many wish they had a specialist at their side. “Shop with Your Doc,” a programme organised by a network of hospitals in California, aims to help with that, stationing doctors and nutritionist in supermarkets to aid customers in navigating food choices in a country where a third of the population is obese. Chih-I Lee, shopping in a supermarket in the city of Irvine, admits that she has a weakness for fizzy soft drinks but assures that her three children do not drink them and they eat all their vegetables.

Sara Foronda worries about diabetes, which runs in her family, and struggles to look away from alluring cookies on display. Mike Keegan wants to buy organic products but sometimes they are too expensive so he takes home substitutes. All are pushing shopping carts at a supermarket in the small city of 2,60,000 residents located about 60 km southeast of Los Angeles. And suddenly they cross paths with a white coat-clad woman. She is Monica Doherty, a nurse specialised in family medicine.

“We are educating consumers on healthy options to help them maximise their health,” said Doherty, all the while clarifying consumers’ misconceptions and giving advice, including recipes. Substitute mashed potatoes with cauliflower puree, for example, or sweet soft drinks with carbonated water, no sugar added, she suggested. That is valuable advice to shoppers making their way down aisles crammed with mouth-watering temptations, much of it processed and packaged. “Obesity many times is multifactorial, and poor choices in the grocery store is one piece of it,” said Richard Afable, the doctor who is chief executive and president of St. Joseph Hoag Health. St. Joseph Hoag Health has been organising these “Shop with Your Doc” days for three years.