Of the 68,000 households in Kentucky where all members are SNAP eligible in what the Migration Policy Institute terms “poor immigrant households,” up to 51% are participants in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as stated in the Policy Brief, SNAP Access and Participation in U.S.-Born and Immigrant Households (https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/mpi_snap-brief-2023-final.pdf).

In order to address this gap through research-based nutrition education through the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) Kentucky Nutrition Education Program (KYNEP), the state Extension Specialist for Access and Engagement and the Extension Specialist Chef collaborated on a series of culturally relevant events that used heritage recipes throughout the 2025 fiscal year.

The collaboration also involved Cooperative Extension personnel from offices throughout the state, Kentucky farmers, local food system practitioners from non-profit food access organizations, school food administrators, The Food Connection, and other Cooperative Extension Service state specialists. Panels of experts in local food system work were invited to speak at The Culture of Agriculture in July and to bookend the series, in Warren County to celebrate Juneteenth.

The planners involved designed a series of hands-on interactive educational events and cooking classes for both live and virtual audiences covering the food cultures surrounding local food and agriculture of the middle, Hispanic Heritage Month, holidays around the world, and the history and heritage of Juneteenth. Participants learned from a presentation about the history, traditions, and social customs associated with those foods and ways to incorporate those aspects of food and nutrition in culinary trainings. The instructors tied in aspects of the food heritages that one might find in Kentucky, as well as incorporating local foods into cooking those cuisines.

The audience recruited for these trainings included CES Family and Consumer Science (FCS) and 4H Youth Development Agents, NEP Assistants, Champion Food Volunteers, Extension Area Agents and Associates, and other interested Extension personnel. Events were held at The Food Connection learning kitchen on campus for the Culture of Agriculture, on Zoom for Hispanic Heritage Month, in Daviess County for Holidays Around the World, and in Warren County for Juneteenth title, “Nourishing Southern Soul: Exploring Heritage Recipes.”

Participants not only gained new culinary skills, but a sense of the importance of preserving history and the reasons for including these different culinary backgrounds in cooking and teaching nutrition. While evaluation response numbers were low (N=4), the scores were positive in that respondents averaged a score of 4.5 out of possible 5 indicating that they are now able to teach the topic to others and a 4.75 out of 5 for connecting them to others doing the same work. The series sparked interest in more heritage recipes being available on the PlanEatMove.org website and other heritage cuisines were requested for inclusion in future offerings.