- Author: Shelby MacNab
- Contributor: Brittanny N. Zweigle
- Contributor: DeAnna Molinar
When I was in elementary school, an upcoming field trip meant we were selling candy bars. Around the holidays, it was not uncommon to have your pick from five dozen cupcakes at the school party. Now that I am in nutrition education, my eyes grow wide when I think back to all of the high-sugar, high-fat foods we brought into the classroom.
With that in mind, I take a lot of pride in the fact that the UC Calfresh Nutrition Education Program in Fresno County is creating healthier school environments.
A healthy school environment includes:
- Nutrition education for students and their parents
- Physical activity
- Healthy...
- Author: Brenda Dawson
These days you can barely pick up a magazine, turn on the TV, or click open Facebook without being told how to eat, what to eat or what not to eat.
But the truth is, dietary advice is nothing new. Some of our rules for eating date back to ancient times as part of religious teachings, and food traditions are central to our understanding of culture. What is new over the last century or so is the application of science to our diets, so that we can know more exactly what nutrition science tells us is best when it comes to filling our plates.
A new book by a UC Davis researcher argues that modern dietary advice is not merely scientific, but also continues to have cultural, ethical and moral messages attached to...
- Author: Shelby MacNab
If I told you I've found the secret to overcoming picky eaters, you'd probably look at me puzzled. How could I have found the secret and NOT SHARED IT YET?!
Unfortunately, there is no "secret." However, there are many ways to encourage children and even adults to develop a love of fruits and vegetables.
UC CalFresh works with low-income families to encourage healthy food choices through nutrition education and healthy taste testing.
Taste testing has been a helpful tool in providing children and their parents an opportunity to explore foods they wouldn't have otherwise tried. Sometimes they have had the fruit or vegetable before but didn't enjoy...
- Author: Alec Rosenberg
Alice Waters (chef, author and UC Berkeley alum) spoke at UCLA's Science and Food event, Edible Education, about the ways in which food can be a catalyst for deeper transformations in education and culture.
Waters' commitment to education led to the creation of the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, a one-acre garden and kitchen classroom at Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. The...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
As we pushed ourselves away from the Thanksgiving table last week, my family, friends and I gave a collective groan from overeating. We are fortunate to have plenty to eat. In 2009, an estimated 3.8 million California adults went hungry because they could not afford to put sufficient food on the table, according to a policy brief by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. That’s up from 2.5 million Californians who went hungry in 2001.
To supplement their food supply, Californians can turn to the CalFresh program, which was formerly known as food stamps. The federal program is called the Supplemental Nutrition...
