Nutrition program aims to teach Middle Georgia families healthy eating habits

With fast food and pre-packaged food so readily available, one local program is teaching people how to make cost-effective and healthy meals while using food supplied by a local park, all at no cost to the participants.

The University of Georgia’s Extended Food Nutrition Education Program, located in Houston County, serves low-income families in the Middle Georgia area, including Cochran, Pulaski, Dooley, Crisp, Wilcox and Houston counties.

La Keshia Levi, the program’s assistant, said several local agencies help to identify candidates for the program.

According to Levi, the program, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, consists of a series of lessons called “Food Talk” in which participants are taught simple nutrition messages through discussion, interaction, cooking and educational material.

Among the topics discussed are reducing mealtime stress and sodium intake, reading food labels, saving money at the grocery store, adding fruits and vegetables to the diet, comparing food prices, reducing food spoilage and waste, eating healthier on the go and reducing saturated transfats.

The class meets once a week for seven weeks, and typically has anywhere from three to 20 participants. So far, Levi has had 259 participants in the program this year and has graduated 183 of them. Upon graduation from the program, participants get a certificate and a recipe book.

Katherine Shelton, a master gardener from Perry, said two of the six raised beds at Bill Hafley Park in Perry are used for growing vegetables specifically for the food nutrition program, although some of the other beds are used as well. Spring vegetables included purple and red potatoes, carrots, yellow and green string beans, and Swiss chard, she said.

“When summer came around, we planted many different varieties of heirloom tomatoes and then long, burpless cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, summer squash and winter squash,” she said, adding that many varieties of herbs have been contributed to the program as well.

“Right now, we are growing black-eyed peas . . . we’re just really happy to be able to do it. It’s just fun to watch things grow and give them to somebody who is going to be able to use them.”

Once the participants have completed all the sessions, Levi said, her hope is that they will change their eating habits and use more fruits and vegetables in their meals.

Levi said her supervisor created a recipe template based on the type of produce the program participant received. The template includes how to prepare and store the produce and includes a recipe that includes a vegetable the participant might have been given.

Levi asks the participants to take pictures of the meals that they have created using the vegetables.

Master Gardener Mary Stephens, of Bonaire, said the garden in Perry was started as a “teaching garden” to educate local residents about how things grow, what grows in the South and how to grow vegetables to eat.

“We’ve picked vegetables and taken them to different organizations in Perry and to local residents that live in that area,” Stephens said. “I think it’s a good thing ... children don’t always get to see where their food is grown ... it gives them the opportunity ... right there at their back door.”

Levi said sometimes there are enough vegetables to give to as many as 13 students, while at other times, they raffle off the bags of food. She estimates that approximately 100 pounds of vegetables from the garden at Hafley Park have been donated to the nutrition program so far this year.

For more information about the program, contact Levi at 478-987-2028, or at keshia30@uga.edu.

This story was originally published August 25, 2015 at 10:28 PM with the headline "Nutrition program aims to teach Middle Georgia families healthy eating habits ."