Helping Kentucky Families Make Healthier Choices

 About 17% of Kentucky children and adolescents 2-19 years of age are obese according to the National Health and Examination Survey. This is about 12.5 million children.

 SNAP-Ed assistants from the University of Kentucky’s Nutritional Education Program work to help children develop healthier diet and physical activity habits.

The Christian County SNAP-Ed assistant was asked to teach nutrition and cooking with an emphasis on healthy snacks at a middle school summer camp. The youth group was enthusiastic about the snacks and readily participated in all aspects of preparing them including chopping, cooking and cleanup. As was expected, their favorite part was sampling the snacks!

Several of the children had never tasted some of the fruits and vegetables used in the recipes and they really enjoyed them. One boy in particular liked the various fruits that were used in the ‘Very Berry Salsa’ recipe especially the blueberries, a fruit he had never tried. He stated that his parents never bought fruit to eat. The assistant encouraged him to ask his parents to buy fruit and vegetables.

The last day of camp was parents' day. After the presentation some of the families talked with the assistant. The boy who loved blueberries and his parents were among those that visited with her. They mentioned how much their son had enjoyed the classes and that he was changing his eating habits and was also influencing his younger siblings to eat better too. The whole family was now regularly eating fruit!

 According to pre and post tests given the children, 96% improved their diet quality with 50% eating fruit more frequently. Also 65% of the youth increased their physical activity and 67% practiced appropriate food safety practices more often including putting foods back in the refrigerator within 2 hours.