Marsh Launches ‘Eat Right Live Right’
Marsh Supermarkets Inc. is recognizing National Public Health Week by introducing the first program of its kind in Indiana to help people with diabetes better understand, manage and live with the disease.
The new program, Eat Right Live Right with Diabetes, features easy-to-use online resources that are designed for people with diabetes and prediabetes, a condition in which a person’s blood-glucose levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes.
An estimated 79 million Americans have prediabetes. It is projected that by 2030 the number of adults with diabetes will double, reaching 50 million people. Nearly half a million Hoosiers – more than 9 percent of Indiana’s adult population – have diagnosed diabetes.
“Marsh wants to be part of the solution in helping to reverse these diabetes trends in Indiana,” said Joe Kelley, Marsh chairman, CEO and president. “With our new eat right live right with diabetes program, Marsh now offers a full suite of nutrition, wellness and pharmacy programs that address this growing public health problem – from our efforts to combat childhood obesity, to in-store and online nutrition resources, to our pharmacy program that offers free diabetes medicines.”
The Eat Right Live Right website offers:
- Health content from leading experts. Each quarter, health and medical professionals from Mayo Clinic will provide valuable information on topics of interest to people living with diabetes – from monitoring and testing, to medication and treatment options, to exercise and nutrition, to pregnancy and diabetes, to health complications associated with disease progression.
- Interactive, video-based cookbook. Titled “Inspired,” the online cookbook features diabetes-friendly recipes with nutritional values and dietary exchanges, colorful photos, chef’s tips and step-by-step video demos, which also can be viewed on shoppers’ smartphones. The cookbook will be updated quarterly with new recipes and video demos.
- Instructional videos. A Marsh pharmacist and registered dietitian offer guidance on ways that diabetes patients can manage their disease, from instruction on the proper use of over-the-counter medications to tips on how to read food labels.
Marsh’s registered dietitian also will host store tours and work with customers to develop shopping strategies and diabetes-friendly meal plans.
With the launch of Eat Right Live Right with Diabetes, Marsh will extend its diabetes care pharmacy program through May 31, 2013. Forty Marsh and MainStreet Market pharmacies in Indiana will continue to offer more than half a dozen oral diabetes medicines, as well as lancets for testing blood sugar, at no cost to Marsh customers. A prescription for the medicines and lancets is required.
Since the program’s launch in November 2011, nearly 6,000 prescriptions for free diabetes medicines have been filled by Marsh pharmacists, enabling many Hoosier families to lower their health care costs. The diabetes care program provides patients with a free diabetes monitoring kit and free training on how to use and read a diabetes meter.
Diabetes patients also have online access to a Marsh pharmacist and a registered dietitian.
Eat Right Live Right is one of several nutrition and wellness programs that Marsh offers to help customers improve their health and well-being. Others include Project 18, a curriculum-based program in Indiana that addresses childhood obesity; Guiding Stars, an in-store program that helps shoppers identify foods that offer the most nutrition for the calories; and Easy to Eat Well, an in-store program that uses symbols to help shoppers easily find foods that address dietary or lifestyle preferences.
Indianapolis-based Marsh operates 70 Marsh stores, including three O’Malia’s Supermarkets and 27 MainStreet Markets in Indiana and Ohio, with 40 Indiana pharmacy locations.