Nutrition Education

Nutrition Programs

Virginia Cooperative Extension has many programs to help children, youth, and adults establish and maintain healthy diets to prevent chronic diseases and obesity.

Cooking Classes

We offer instruction in preparing everything from healthy snacks to complete meals. Specialty classes have included low-sodium recipes, cooking with farm fresh local foods, cooking with tofu, vegetarian cooking, making healthy meals from canned foods, cooking with exotic fruits and vegetables, and cooking with greens. To arrange for a class, contact Jennifer Abel at 703-228-6417; jabel@vt.edu.

Nutrition programs for children and youth

We offer many activities to help children make healthy food choices.

The Ultimate Milk Challenge

Designed for kindergarteners and first graders, children learn the importance of minimizing sugar in their diets and pledge to choose 2%, 1%, or skim milk instead of chocolate milk. Those who successfully complete the challenge receive certificates and stickers.

My Pyramid Choices

Designed for second and third graders, children learn about recommended daily calorie intakes based on age and activity level. They then divide into groups and make healthy daily food choices for breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner.

Food Label Detectives

Designed for fourth and fifth graders, this activity has students work in groups to select meals from fast food restaurant menus. They add up the total fat and sugar grams in their chosen meals, convert those grams to teaspoons, and get a visual representation when the total sugar and fat (in the form of vegetable shortening) teaspoons are spooned out onto plates. The students then make healthier meal choices and create plans for healthy eating at fast food restaurants.

Healthy Plate

Children learn about the concept of filling a quarter of their dinner time plate with vegetables, a quarter with grains, and half with protein. They then get the opportunity to draw their own healthy plate on a special template. The templates are then sent to a company that turns the children’s drawings into real plates that they can keep forever. There is a $10 charge for this class to cover the cost of the plates.