Why is it important?
Eating habits are learned behaviors; they are not intuitive. What children learn to eat at home early in life will stick with them well into adulthood. Involving the whole family is the best way to promote better eating habits and healthy activities for your kids. Healthy Families – Healthy Futures was established to empower and support families, schools, and childcare centers with the knowledge and skills to make healthy food and beverage choices.
In the face of hunger, prioritizing healthy eating is even harder, especially in low-income and middle income communities where few nutritious foods are even available. And those communities have long suffered higher rates of diet-related diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.
Providing opportunities for nutrition education in schools, childcare centers, and in the family home is a vital part of uplifting the health of those that participate in the program. Healthy Families – Healthy Futures strives to promote a healthy future, one nutritious meal at a time.
What We Know
We are raising a generation of children where no one in the household cooks.
Our children have shorter life expectancy that their parents.
In some areas, fast food outlets and convenience stores out number grocery stores 40 to 1.
The top causes of death in America can be related to diet. (Heart Disease, Cancer and Diabetes).
Early half of all adults in the United States (27% or 116 million) have some type of hypertension.
In 2019-20, 23.8% of non-Hispanic, Black Youths ages 10 to 17 had obesity.
Immigrant communities suffer from higher instances of childhood obesity due to drastic diet changes.
Today, there are an estimated 17 million children struggling with hunger in America – 6 million more than before the pandemic. And 2.7 million more families are going hungry.
