Moree’s Polly Antees rejects that old shopping and eating habits are hard to break.

The researcher visited Dubbo this week to release the results of a study into food access and affordability within the Western NSW Local Health District and other parts of inland NSW.

She conducted the study across three months of 2014 with Charles Sturt University lecturer in nutrition and dietetics Jackie Priestly.

A NSW Ministry of Health grant of $66,000 and in-kind support from 22 organisations that helped collect data made the study possible.

Participants undertook training in Dubbo before heading out into the health district to survey 58 grocery stores and two fruit and vegetable stores, one in Dubbo and another in Cobar understood to have since closed.

They used a tool called the Victorian Health Food Basket containing 44 items to determine how easy it was for recipients of Centrelink income payments to buy them.

“In the 44 items is all the nutrients you need to get your recommended daily intake of macro and micro nutrients,” Mrs Antees said.

She said the study found greengrocers were a “dying shop industry” and a family of four would need to spend 34 per cent of their income to obtain the 44 items, should they be available.

Mrs Antees said the outlay would put a family at risk of “food insecurity”, a term reflecting vulnerability to running out of food and not having money to buy more.

She said the study found less choice and higher prices were likely to be encountered “the further west you went from Sydney” and in communities with a “high proportion” of Aboriginal people.

But Mrs Antees said residents living within the boundaries of the health district were interested in ditching diets top heavy with meat and “discretionary” foods high in sugar and fat. “Vegetables per kilo cost less than meat per kilo, so adding more vegies to your meals and eating less meat brings down the cost of the food,” she said.

Mrs Antees said programs teaching young and old about growing vegetables, being smarter shoppers and budget-wise cooks were resonating with people in the health district who had watched loved ones battle diabetes and heart disease.

“People want to eat healthy. They don’t want to get sick,” she said.

The researcher would like to see more people benefiting from programs run by the likes of the health district and Australian Red Cross staff.

“More funding for primary health is probably needed,” Mrs Antees said.