- Author: Brenda Roche Wolford
One year ago in June, the USDA unveiled the new food icon, MyPlate. Based on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, MyPlate was created to remind us to make healthy choices at mealtime and to visit the website to get more information. This new, improved and simplified version of MyPyramid was an exciting development for dietitians like myself. No longer would we have to explain to the public what those abstract yet colorful bands represented on MyPyramid. The plate is simple and and gets right to the point, and is a great teaching tool in my opinion.
The beauty of MyPlate is that the...
- Author: Brenda Roche Wolford
Last Friday I had the opportunity to speak to a group of residents at the LA Family Housing, Valley Shelter in North Hollywood. We met outdoors amidst sprouting tomato plants, low-hanging loquats and variety of fruits and vegetables being grown in a beautiful garden setting.
It was not my first time visiting this tranquil North Hollywood shelter garden. I have come several times before to talk to the residents about nutrition, health and the importance of making smart food choices on a limited budget. I was due to return this spring to speak to the new residents who arrived since my last visit.
A Model of Success
This garden is not only producing an abundance of food for the residents...
- Author: Alec Rosenberg
A Food Blog post last week highlighted the great work of UC CalFresh, the UC Cooperative Extension nutrition education program that reaches more than 220,000 people a year, helping low-income families make healthy food choices, stretch food dollars and increase consumption of California’s agricultural products.
The University of California has an array of healthy living outreach efforts. In addition to CalFresh, one program that you might not expect involves the UC Davis School of Medicine. The Communities and Health Professionals...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
To meet the needs of today’s time-pressed consumers, UC Cooperative Extension nutrition, family and consumer sciences advisors collected the most pertinent food budgeting and healthy eating concepts together in a new curriculum that can be presented in four one-hour sessions. The curriculum is taught by UC CalFresh, a nutrition education program that helps recipients of federal food assistance (formerly called Food Stamps) make the most of their benefits.
Typically, participants are offered an eight-session course called “Eating Smart Being Active.” The UC advisors realized the audience couldn’t always devote that much time to nutrition education, said
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
UC’s Food Stamp Nutrition and Education Program, or FSNEP, has officially changed its name to University of California CalFresh Nutrition Education Program, or UC CalFresh for short.
In 2008 the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service changed the name of the food stamp program to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Last year, the California Department of Social Services updated to CalFresh, the name of the state program that issues monthly electronic benefits that can be used to buy food.
“Since food stamps are no longer used nationally, and the name...