Our strategy has paid off. Judith W. Heald is program manager for the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program at Penn State. In the United States today, low-income families are often chronically undernourished. They have trouble stretching limited food dollars to provide healthful diets and have limited access to affordable, healthful foods. In fact, each year an estimated one in eight children in the United States does not get enough to eat.
Poor diet leads to poor health, low work productivity and impaired mental functions.
Gaining these skills can make a real difference in the lives of children, youth and families. Forty percent of clients were from a variety of ethnic minority populations, and 74 percent of families had children. Working parents, single homemakers, pregnant teens and youth from rural and urban communities are taught in small groups or individually by nutrition education advisers hired from within the community and trained and supervised by Cooperative Extension agents and by University faculty and staff. Several other programs target youth primarily in after-school and day camp activities. Eating Right is Basic is often used in a delivery model called the SuperCupboard.