It’s important for everyone to have good nutritional habits, but it’s vital for those recovering from drug or alcohol addictions.   Those who abuse drugs are more likely to experience loss of appetite, poor eating choices, low blood sugar, organ damage, and gastrointestinal disorders.  Teaching clients in recovery to make better nutritional choices will not only help in their recovery process, but have long term affects they can take with them when they graduate from their program. 

            The Daviess County Nutrition Education Program has partnered with Owensboro Regional Recovery (ORR) to become part of their life skills portion of their client’s recovery process.  Participants at ORR can not graduate from the center without completing the Healthy Choices for EveryBody curriculum.  The Daviess County Nutrition Education Program (NEP) Assistant focuses on helping the clients make better choices in their everyday eating.  This is done by encouraging each client to “eat the rainbow”, (working in a variety of fruits and vegetables to their day), making lean, and varying, choices of their protein, learning to read food labels, and getting movement in throughout the day.

            Currently, the Daviess County NEP Assistant has graduated 28 men through the Healthy Choice curriculum.  Of these numbers 90.5% have showed positive changes in any food group, 83% improvement in Diet Quality, 87.5% improvement in Food Resource Management, and 86% increase in exercising for at least 30 minutes a day more days a week.   

            Participants in the Healthy Choices classes have been very receptive with trying new foods that normally aren’t part of their diet.   After trying a sample of our Colorful Quesadillas, one client said, “Who knew that spinach didn’t taste that bad!”    Another client commented, “Thanks to you, I’ve been making sure I’m getting different colors of fruits and vegetables in my day.”   

            Little changes can add to big results.  With the success of the program so far, ORR has expressed an interest to continue the partnership with the Daviess County NEP the remainder of the year.