Vegetable Surprise

The 2015-2020 Dietary guidelines for Americans recommend that Americans consume more fruits and vegetables as part of an overall dietary pattern to reduce the risk for diet related chronic disease such as cardio vascular disease, type 2 diabetes, some cancers and obesity.

To address this issue, The Boone County Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Assistant (SNAP-ED) offered a “Cooking with Families” 5 part series. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic shut-down, the last session was not held with participants thus ending data could not be collected. Positive differences were still made and discussed by the participating families. During class conversations, participants discussed that the biggest struggle was adding vegetables to their family’s meal.

 An example of a positive difference made involved recipes. One of the favorite recipes that the families added to their meals was Mac and Cheese Surprise. All families loved this recipe and the surprise is that it has summer squash as one of the ingredients instead of a lot of cheese compared to traditional Macaroni and cheese recipes. One family added this to their weekly grocery list and prepped the summer squash to freeze it so they could continue to make this healthier version long after squash was out of season.

Data from: CDC Center Disease Control and Prevention