There is a wealth of research on the importance of eating meals at home for health and child development reasons.  Planning meals can help save time and money while providing proper nutrition for the entire family.   The Clinton County Nutrition Education Program Assistant partnered with the Clinton County Middle School to offer an after school cooking program to a group of students.   A group of 10 sixth graders were taught 6 lessons from the 4 H Teen Cuisine Curriculum.   They learned all about healthy choices and how to prepare healthy foods.  Following the youth class, the students’ parents came in to learn all about nutrition through the Healthy Choices for Everybody Curriculum.  Throughout the course of 6 weeks, 10 parents learned food resource management, nutrition recommendations, food safety and the importance of making nutritious choices.  

As a result of this program, 86% of participants started planning meals more often and 71% improved their dark green vegetable consumption. One gentleman stated,” I have saved so much money since I started planning meals at home. And I feel so much better now that I’m not eating fast food all the time.”