INUVIK - It's Thursday afternoon in Inuvik's North Mart department store, and John Day has his hands full.

As he grabs a box of plain Cheerios off the shelf, two-year-olds Jared Day and Trudy Rogers root around the cart.

Suddenly a pink rubber boot ñ along with a packet of spaghetti noodles ñ goes flying to the ground.

"What? You don't want to wear your boots? Okay then," concedes Day, as he calmly puts the boot and spaghetti back in the cart.

As he later explains, shopping with children is sometimes quite an adventure.

But you have to pick battles you can win, he said.

In recent months, the NWT has held various campaigns about nutrition, intended for children and toddlers.

One of them was Drop the Pop, which encouraged students in school to drink less sugar.

March was also nutrition month, with posters placed around Inuvik encouraging healthy foods.

Day said he remembered seeing the posters, and agreed it seemed like a good message.

But as two-year-old Jared went running for a brightly-coloured candy display, Day said it was sometimes difficult to enforce.

"Yeah, it can be tough, I try to give them stuff like juice or water instead of pop."

He added, "you do what you can."