This year, the Floyd County Cooperative Extension Office Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program partnered with women clientele at The Mountain Center for Recovery and Hope. The Nutrition Education Program’s “Healthy Choices for Every Body” curriculum was utilized. This curriculum serves to teach limited resource adults the importance of healthy eating and physical activity. Another accompanying tool to further aid in healthier eating habits is NEP’s food and nutrition recipe calendar. The Mountain Recovery women’s group really enjoyed anticipating what we were going to cook that day. The ladies would show up for the lesson excited to assist with cooking our meal and were always eager to taste test the finished product. Often, uncertainty about adding a certain fruit or vegetable to an otherwise traditional recipe was usually met with remarks like “Wow, Before, I never would have thought about adding this to the recipe” and “I’m so surprised at how good this turned out”. The recipe calendar really helped to get the group to try healthy, delicious meals that they otherwise wouldn’t have tried on their own.

 Upon graduation from the program, eighty-six percent of the participants improved their overall diet quality. Furthermore, eighty percent of participants had started consuming red and orange vegetables more often each week, ninety percent of participants drank soda less often, and one hundred percent of the women were consuming more vegetables daily.