Food Co-Operatives: A Potential Community-Based Strategy to Improve Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Sydney, Australia

Food co-ops are individual-, community- or charity-based groups, and enable their members to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables in bulk, resulting in cheaper and fresher produce directly from farmers or wholesalers. Our previous research has shown that most co-ops in Sydney are in high income areas, whereas we recognize that setting up food co-ops in low SES areas will be more likely to address the problem of affordability for families. This project will involve qualitative surveys with stakeholders involved in food co-ops in Sydney to identify the requirements for starting a food co-op and developing a “how to” guide for setting one up and assessing the acceptability and feasibility of this approach for families in Western Sydney. In the future we plan to develop and test an intervention based on the food co-op model for improving fruit and vegetable intake.