The following is an excerpt from... 

Parent Involvement in Nutrition

by the National Head Start Parent Involvement Training Contractor, RMC Research Corporation, Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Head Start provides education in nutrition principles toward not only the goal of improved child development, but toward the improvement of adult habits. Parents can become involved in monitoring the nutrition status of children as well as in the planning and evaluating of nutritional services in the program. One way to interest parents in a nutritional program is to begin where they are by exploring food preferences and cultural practices in the home.

Parents can bring in empty boxes, cans, paper, and plastic from foods their family has eaten at home. These materials can be used to plan an informal workshop for parents on nutrition and early learning with their children. Grocery receipts and commodity foods can be added for alessonon budgeting and meal planning. In the workshop, the parents can:

• Sort the packaging to show children the five basic food groups (milk, meat, vegetables, fruit, and bread);
• Teach their children shapes, sizes, and colors by using the containers; and
• Talk about why they choose the foods they eat and what motivates their food choices.

Food traditions from the home should be a regular part of a program's nutritional focus. Parents can assist the nutritionist in planning traditional meals from their cultures. An excellent guide for this is the Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks, published by Lerner Publications Company, Minneapolis, Minnesota. There are over 25 books in this series in languages from African to Vietnamese to Hungarian. These little cookbooks are lively, well illustrated, and written at a fifth grade and up reading level. They describe social life and customs and include typical menus for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. They have pronunciation guides, metric conversion charts, and recommendations for easily attainable substitutes to cut down on saturated fats and cholesterol. In addition to the recipes, planning traditional meals complies with a Performance Standard to create a genuine social context for nutrition in programs.

Education in nutrition is also an excellent starting point for adult education and literacy goals as follows:

• Knowledge of measurement and metric conversion are essential math skills;
• Questions on nutrition and/or the digestive system are often topics on the GED test; and
• Some GED tests have chemistry questions based on the pH of certain foods and common household cleaners.

A program, while providing an informal introduction to food, can act as a springboard for exploring these topics. Other sources of nutrition information are local school systems which usually have a basic nutrition guide, along with information about their school lunch program. A resource to consider is Nutrition by Leslie Jean Le Master, published by Children's Press, Chicago, Illinois. Although this is a juvenile book, it depicts families and provides a thorough discussion of nutrients and deficiency diseases. Another publication, The Human Body, by Steck Vaughn, has a section on the digestive system and nutrients, which may be useful for adults seeking their GED.

Finally, resources are available from local Cooperative Extension Services, listed under "Local or County Government" in the phone book. Other resources are cookbooks, low-cost meal planners, and shopping guides.