American tourist Patsy Felton is one in a million. That's the number of tourists who have put Tasmania on their travel agenda in the past 12 months.
The Washington native was attracted to the "fresh air" and to the "fact that it was still small," she says. And then there's the food.
"It's a growing food industry and that really intrigues me," she adds.
Felton is one of a growing number of visitors zeroing in on Tasmania's food culture, drawn by the state's reputation as a food-lover's paradise.
Former chef Mary McNeill says the state is "just the best" when it comes to gourmet food.
The Tasmanian local runs a four-hour walking tour in the heart of Hobart, taking tourists on a tasting journey of some of the state's best producers.
"What's special about Tasmania really is the cool climate that allows the intensity of flavour from our wine and our fruit you really taste that," she says.
But while fresh produce is readily available in the capital, it can be a different story further afield.
Health experts have identified a number of what they're calling "food deserts", particularly in regional and rural areas of the state, where there's limited access to fresh food.
CEO of the Heart Foundation of Tasmania Graeme Lynch says a lack of access to fresh produce is linked to a number of different health issues.
"It's a paradox," he says. "We have some of the best fruit and vegetables and produce in Australia but unfortunately we have some of the worst health outcomes.
Data collected by the Heart Foundation of Tasmania indicates close to 40 per cent of the state's residents have high cholesterol, and 30 per cent have high blood pressure -- both significantly higher than the national average.
Fewer than a quarter of the state's residents are eating the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables each day, a statistic Graeme Lynch says is linked to accessibility.
"We have areas in Tasmania where there aren't large supermarkets, for example," he says.
"We have areas where there are just the local food store, but the local food store doesn't stock fresh fruits and vegetables -- if it does, they're often out of date -- so the choices that people are faced with are packaged, ready-made, take away foods, lots of foods cooked in saturated fats."
A collaborative project between the Heart Foundation and the University of Tasmania is underway to tackle the problem.
"Specifically, the outcomes from this project is to identify all those areas around Tasmania which we call food deserts, where there isn't access to health vegetables and fruits, and to fill those gaps," says Lynch.
The Healthy Food Access Tasmania project aims to link growers, producers, retailers and wholesalers with local communities and those in the social services sector, to fill those gaps, but it could take time to see results.
"The big outcomes in population health initiatives like this take decades to really measure," says Lynch.
Part of the project is a data-gathering exercise to determine exactly how widespread the problem of food access is.
"That's benchmark data," adds Lynch. "That gives us something to measure against in two-and-a-half years' time."
In the meantime, food tour operator Mary McNeill says with tourism contributing an estimated $1.3 billion to the Tasmanian economy each year, visitors shouldn't be put off travelling to enjoy the fruits of the state.
"We are the most dependent economy on tourism as a whole," she says. "And we need visitors to come and enjoy it with us."
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