Nutrition Education Programs and Related Initiatives

The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) and the Team Nutrition Initiative are programs that focus on promoting the value of nutrition and education amongst students, teachers, and the community. The EFNEP and Team Nutrition Initiative support and promote eating healthy and they both work to ensure that the food resources within a household or organization are being utilized correctly and to their full potential. The EFNEP and Team Nutrition Initiative both play a tremendous role trying to shape the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of children and adolescents throughout the communities. They both aim their efforts towards the children, adolescents, families, as well as teachers, school foodservice's, and members of the community who claim guardianship over children. Both organizations want to make sure that they are shaping every member of the community and teaching them the values of food and the environment in which children and adolescents live and learn in.

There are some people who claim that they cannot eat healthy and live a nutritious lifestyle because they do not have enough money to afford the products. The EFNEP steps up at this point and provides individuals and families with a low income education and training sessions to assist and improve their nutrition knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. The EFNEP effectively steers families with a low income in the right direction towards a healthy nutritious lifestyle through their designed skill-based and interactive activities that teach them the value of nutrition. In 1995, the USDA launched a program known as Team Nutrition to restore child nutrition programs and to assist schools within the community that are promoting the nutritional healthy of children through their education curriculum. Team Nutrition creates available training and technical assistance for school foodservice's that are in need of lessons and information to provide their children with healthy food choices.

Resource: 
"Position of the American Dietetic Association: Child and Adolescent Nutrition Assistance Programs" , Nutrition Education Programs and Related Initiatives. Journal of American Dietetic Association