Canyon County Extension educator Joey Peutz occasionally gets phone calls about food allergies—especially gluten—and about phytochemicals that may offer some protection against cancer.

At the low-income Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) in Pocatello, UI specialist Audrey Liddil fields questions on how to simultaneously keep food costs down and nutrition levels up.

Above right: Shelly Johnson, back center in photo, an extension educator in Kootenai County, discusses food safety with Master Food Preservers during a weeklong workshop this summer. Photo by Mel Coulter.

Kootenai County residents ask extension eductor Shelly Johnson about high-protein diets, soy, and heart health.

And in Twin Falls, extension eductor Rhea Lanting’s callers want to prepare “wonderful meals that everybody likes” in less than 20 minutes. But the largest percentage of Lanting’s nutrition clients have recently been diagnosed with diabetes and are asking for meal plans and recipes to minimize the disease’s effects.

Those requests have kept extension nutrition specialist Martha Raidl cooking up a large menu of educational materials. Since joining the UI faculty in 1998, Raidl has developed classes on everything from herbal supplements to osteoporosis, from sugar substitutes to soy nuts, from antioxidants to food allergies, and from diet fads to diabetes.

Hundreds of thousands of Idahoans can benefit directly from the educational programs the extension nutrition faculty develop and deliver. Nearly 5 percent of Idahoans—or about 63,000—are diabetic, and at least 114,000 have either low bone mass or osteoporosis. In addition, about 55 percent of Idaho adults are considered overweight, contributing heavily to the 38 percent of Idaho deaths that are due to cardiovascular disease.

Raidl, who has worked in clinical settings in the U.S. and England and has directed a graduate program in clinical nutrition in Tennessee, knows that it often takes frightening news from the doctor before a consumer will take dietary changes to heart. But she would rather prevent those nutrition-related health problems, and she does not underestimate the educational challenge.

“Increasing consumers’ knowledge of nutrition won’t, in itself, change behavior,” she says. “You have to show people how to apply the information.”

“Knowing and not doing is equal to not knowing,” agrees Lanting. “You can’t just hand out recipes and think that people will try them.”

That means including time in the workshops for participants to prepare sample meals, or to shop for calcium-rich or heart-healthy foods in the supermarket. And it means spending time creating graphic images—real-life visuals—that hit consumers in the gut, like setting a chunk of margarine next to a fast-food meal to demonstrate its fat content or hanging a baggy of sugar on a pop bottle.

“Hands-on training is extremely useful. It makes the classes more fun, more interesting, and gets people talking to one another. You can see them going through the learning process. It really diminishes their fear and anxiety about starting a new behavior. They see that it’s something that they can easily incorporate in their daily life.”

Throughout Idaho, participating extension educators have delivered pilot classes in “Healthy Eating with Diabetes” and “Osteoporosis Prevention in Treatment” to more than 200 adults. Along with Extension Nutrition Program (ENP) paraprofessionals, they have taught “Got Calcium”—a class that includes a “scavenger hunt” through nutrition labels—to 50 school-age children.

With the Idaho Department of Education, the ENP nutrition advisors have used “Team Nutrition” materials to study the effects of nutrition education on the eating habits of about 300 school-age children.

This year, Raidl and Liddil are moving “WIN the Rockies” to the front burner. The multi-state wellness program, funded through a $4.5 million grant to the University of Wyoming, links land-grant institutions in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana with other state and community resources. Raidl is convinced that building community commitment to improved nutrition, increased physical activity, and realistic body images, will help sustain the changes that intensive nutrition education can make. Because obesity is surging, “WIN the Rockies” will focus on overweight children and their parents.

Lanting considers children an especially fruitful audience for nutrition education. “Many times, they are really more eager to learn than adults,” she says. “Their behaviors aren’t already instilled, and they really want to learn to cook because they haven’t had the opportunity to make a lot of foods.”

While children are learning to cook, why not teach them how to prepare those five servings of fruits and vegetables they should be eating each day? “Part of our role is to help kids make healthy choices now, so that later in life that just becomes something they do,” she says.
Another key audience is low-income, limited-resource families. Through both ENP and EFNEP, UI paraprofessionals take their information on nutrition, food safety, and resource management directly to participants’ homes and deliver it in their own languages. “You can really get down and help people this way,” says Liddil. “Many people don’t do well in lecture situations.” Raidl estimates the two programs have reached more than 98,000 adults and youth.

Peutz believes one of the most significant contributions extension can make in nutrition education is to help consumers—regardless of their income or educational levels—locate reliable, research-based information about foods and their effects on health. “I think consumers are much more aware of nutrition needs, but they are also being bombarded with so many different messages that they sometimes get overwhelmed with the amount of information that’s out there,” she says.

“There’s so much garbage in the media about melting off weight overnight if you eat a certain food or buy a certain product,” says Liddil. “We’re always trying to combat so much bad information with the good information that we have.”

But Liddil is convinced the battle is winnable. “Education is empowering—especially when it comes to food,” she says. “When people have control over food and nutrition, they’re healthier, they spend more meal times with their families, and they have more time and money to spend on other things.”

BreakFAST!
• Mix your favorite cold cereal (a carbohydrate) with yogurt (a protein) to both sprint into the day and go the distance until lunch.
•Arrange a thin layer of cheese on your toast and pop it into the microwave.
• Toast frozen, whole-grain waffles and top them off with yogurt and berries.
• Roll a scrambled egg and salsa into a tortilla.
• Combine yogurt, orange juice, and a banana in a blender for 30 seconds.

LIGHTening Snacks
• Graze the vegetable crisper, not the cookie jar. Dip raw veggies into nonfat plain yogurt or low-fat ricotta cheese that has been flavored with pureed fresh vegetables or fruit.

In a NUTshell
• During the year 2000, U.S. consumers were introduced to 16,914 new foods and beverages. About 25,000 dietary supplements were available over-the-counter, through the mail or across the Internet. But no matter what you eat, when you eat it, or how you supplement it, you will get 4 calories from each gram of protein and carbohydrate and 9 calories from each gram of fat.

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