By Luke Voogt
Geelong Cats Joel Selwood, Brandan Parfitt and Darcy Moloney tackled poor health and eating habits head on with a visit to Belmont Primary School on Tuesday.
The Cats captain joined the tough midfielder and the AFLW young gun doing push ups and jumping about with the students to kick off the club’s Healthy Heroes program.
“This is one of our key pillars down at the Cats,” Selwood said.
“It’s been going for five years now, so it’s starting to get real legs.”
After spending most of 2020 in lockdown or AFL hubs, Selwood was happy to get back into the community and meet the young Cats fans.
“[Our community engagement] was very limited last year – all through Zoom – so it is nice to be back,” he said.
The Healthy Heroes program reached more than 7000 grade 3 and 4 students in Geelong in 2019, and is now expanding.
“To be able to expand GMHBA Healthy Heroes to even more kids, encompassing all primary school levels is amazing and the players enjoy delivering this,” Selwood said.
The program educates children on having a healthy lifestyle with key messages around eating, water consumption, physical activity, screen time and sleep.
Only 5.1 per cent of adults meet fruit and vegetable consumption guidelines in the Barwon region with just over half completing the recommended daily physical activity, according to GMHBA chair Claire Higgins.
“We know that our health is not as good as it could be,” she said.
“GMHBA is very pleased to be part of a program that gets to kids early and sets them up with the right life-time habits that will make them healthier adults.”
