Nutrition Education and Wellness Initiatives
We’re here to help more families in Arkansas access nutritious food and create delicious meals. We believe that healthy food is the foundation of a healthy community, and that regardless of budget, foods that nourish and heal the body should be available and affordable to all.
Nutrition Education
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Wellness Initiatives
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Everyone deserves nutritious, wholesome meals!
Nutrition Education is one of the Alliance’s core programs in a holistic approach to combating food insecurity. We envision an Arkansas where all people have reliable, affordable food choices and the skills to create enjoyable meals for their health.
Participants learn about:
Cooking & Nutrition
Meal Planning & Prepping
Food Budgeting & Healthy Grocery Shopping
Stretching Ingredients & SNAP Dollars
Food Storage & Minimizing Food Waste
Nutrition Education Options
Cooking Matters
This program helps families on a limited food budget, shop for and prepare healthy meals at home. It’s hands-on, learner-centered food skills education based on USDA’s My Plate guidelines, and held in convenient, familiar locations. Participants cook together, eat together, and are sent home with a bag full of nutritious food to practice the recipes taught in class. Cooking Matters emphasizes food as nourishment and enjoyment, as well as a catalyst in building healthier communities.
Food Smarts
Food Smarts is a flexible, discussion-led cooking and nutrition curriculum, and like Cooking Matters, is based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This curriculum was designed by Leah’s Pantry to ensure all people have access to healthy food and feel competent preparing easy, nutritious meals. Food Smarts is implemented through the lens of trauma and resilience, exhibiting that positive, nourishing food experiences can heal an individual, encourage healthy community norms, promote nutrition security, and support the realignment of broken food systems.
Grocery Store Tours
Grocery Store Tours are single-session, hands-on lessons that teach shoppers the principles of MyPlate, economical ways to buy more fruits and vegetables, how to compare unit prices to save money, and how to read nutrition labels and ingredient lists to identify whole grains and fiber and avoid food high in added sugar, sodium, and saturated fats. These tours are designed to be highly interactive, as participants are asked open ended questions and encouraged to be “food detectives” to decipher ingredient lists, read and compare food labels, and avoid common marketing tricks.
On the Road
Our team also travels the state, attending health fairs and conferences, nutritional workshops on college campuses, and tabling events with nutrition activities and handouts. We can also lead virtual classes accessible from anywhere. Finally, we can customize a pop-up grocery store tour for a classroom or office setting, offer a food demo and tasting at events, or give a presentation on nutrition security.
Partner Support Includes:
Customized Training
Instructor & Participant Books
Bag of Kitchen Utensils for Participants
Class Stipends for Groceries
When available
Kitchen Equipment Starter Kits
Five ways you can get involved
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Get involved in our Nutrition Education Program!
Join our community cooking program and connect through food!
what happens next?
Contact us
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Meet with us over Zoom
After reaching out, we will work to schedule a Zoom call with you, where we explore the details of working together.
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Attend a Training
Depending on your chosen curriculum and location, we will schedule this online or in person.
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Fill out paperwork
After you are trained, you will receive necessary paperwork. We request this be filled out 4 weeks before your class/tour begins.
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Recruit Participants, Gather, and Cook Together!
We recommend using locations where people already gather, such as community centers, churches, libraries, or schools.
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Wellness Initiatives
As an organization, we are first committed to connecting Arkansans to important nutrition support systems. We can’t say that individuals should eat differently unless we are also working so that more families have food recommended by federal dietary standards in their reach. It’s then pairing this increased nutritious food access with community-based nutrition education that empowers more families to create affordable meals that heal.
With this priority in mind, the nutrition team has further expanded its reach by implementing Wellness Initiatives that recognize that food insecurity as a social determinant of health, linked to chronic, adverse health conditions and conversely, that “Food is Medicine.” Nutrition education can broaden the impact of public health projects, so we prioritize multi-level partnerships and approaches that improve nutrition to prevent and reduce diet-related chronic diseases.
The AR Fruit and Vegetable RX
In September 2022, the Alliance was awarded a USDA Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP) Produce Prescription grant to fund a 3-year project to increase the fresh fruit and vegetable consumption of patients diagnosed with diet-related health conditions. The goals are to increase food security for participants, improve their confidence in making healthy food choices, and improve overall health of participants to decrease long-term healthcare costs.
The Nutrition Pantry Program
The Nutrition Pantry Program is a healthy pantry program that addresses the policy, systems, and environment of free food distributions with a client-centered approach. NPP implementation utilizes client feedback, and the standardized Healthy Food Pantry Assessment Tool, to increase nutritious food options and build strong community connections.
As NPP Implementors, trained through Leah’s Pantry, the Alliance works with member pantries to create trauma-informed workplans that increase nutritious, culturally sensitive food, complemented with nutrition education, and to tap into valuable community assets for sustainability.
To get involved, contact Laken.
how we got here
Our goal is to provide resources and programs to Arkansans struggling with hunger that help make the healthiest food choice also be the easiest, most accessible, food choice.
The Alliance is now a SNAP-Ed Implementing Agency and the Nutrition Education and Wellness Initiatives team continues to carry out the broader mission to help make nutritious food more obtainable for low-income kids, families, and seniors. We do this by sharing foods skills education to increase consumption of healthier food, with expanded delivery methods and curriculum options for any age range.
Committed to the belief that “Food is Medicine,” our nutrition education network includes a growing number of healthcare professionals: some screening for food insecurity in their intake process to educate patients on important federal nutrition programs like SNAP and WIC; some looking for on-going community-based nutrition education as a referral; some embracing nutrition education as a preventive service offered in clinic; and some going so far as to boldly prescribe nutritious food as part of a produce prescription project and treatment plan.
Are You In Need?
We would like to help you find the resources you need.
Contact
200 West Capitol Avenue, Suite 1300
Little Rock, Arkansas 72201
Newsletter
The Alliance Alert goes out to members, advocates and others who want to stay up on hunger issues in Arkansas. See our latest newsletter.
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