Lavish gym’s novel tactic to encourage healthy eating

A new Brisbane gym has gone to extreme measures to ensure its members are eating healthy and you won’t believe what it is doing.

A Brisbane gym is taking healthy eating for its clients to the next level, launching Australia’s first edible garden farm inside a fitness centre.

TotalFusion Platinum at Newstead has built a whopping 1500sq m farm on the rooftop of the world-leading fitness and wellness centre to grow fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs.

The organically grown bounty includes 40 different crops, ranging from spinach, snow peas and parsley to tomatoes, beans and cucumbers. All produce will be picked fresh each day for use in both the centre’s Rooftop Pool Bar and Refuel Bar cafe, as well as an upcoming restaurant and marketplace also in the first-of-its-kind precinct that is slated to open early next year.

Chef Neven Vanderzee and food and beverage manager Corryn Rattray with some of the food and one of the chickens from the rooftop farm at TotalFusion Platinum in Newstead. Picture, John Gass

“The exciting part for me is it’s that real farm-to-table experience and teaching people how things grow,” said TotalFusion Platinum Newstead’s executive chef and farm caretaker Neven Vanderzee.

The farmed ingredients will be used for everything from burritos, breakfast tacos and salads to smoothies and healthy cocktails, with the menus to change regularly depending on what is being harvested.

“It’s about letting nature guide where the menu goes and not ordering something in just because you want to put it on the menu,” Mr Vanderzee said.

The farm has been designed to be as sustainable as possible with chickens on-site to help with natural fertiliser, a bee colony for pollination, and a worm farm and composting which will take care of many of the food scraps from the cafe and bar.

Mr Vanderzee expects to be harvesting up to 200kg of produce each week from the farm for the eateries, which will be part of the Southern Hemisphere’s largest health and wellness precinct with the likes of fitness, recovery, allied health, medical and beauty under one roof.