Free programs teach families how to buy and prepare healthy meals

On a recent Tuesday night, three Wichita dads and their daughters were touring a local grocery store, getting tips on how to buy and prepare healthy meals through a free program offered by the Sedgwick County Extension Office.

Meanwhile at Sara Knight’s home, it was fish night, a new tradition she’s started to help herself and her family eat better after taking an American Heart Association challenge.

While Kansas is moving up the ranks in the recently released State of Obesity report – from the 19th fattest state in 2013 to the 13th fattest in 2014 – these Wichitans are trying to make a difference in how they eat. According to recent reports, the Kansas obesity rate has gone up every year since the government started collecting data in 1995.

Even small changes in diets can make a difference, say experts.

“We’re so busy doing things that we (as a society) eat out a lot. We’ve stopped cooking and making dinners priority,” said Jennifer Jackson, an internal medicine doctor with Via Christi Health and associate director for the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita’s internal medicine residency program. “We eat ultra-processed foods, like cookies, chips … and if we focused on eating real food and whole foods that would make a difference.”

Making a difference

Learning how to change their eating habits was one reason Knight and another Wichita mom, Ashley Colonnese took an American Heart Association healthy lifestyle makeover challenge called A Better You.

The women also wanted to set good examples and help their children eat better.

In Colonnese’s household, they did a challenge to try a new vegetable or fruit every day, said Ashley Colonnese, who has three children ages 4, 7 and 9. The kids quickly got on board with that, said Colonnese, because the children’s school, Beech Elementary, had a similar weekly challenge. That’s led to the family eating more fruits and vegetables a day, a key to healthy eating.

According to the current U.S. dietary guidelines, Americans need to consume more of certain foods and nutrients such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy products, and seafood for a healthy diet.

In the Knight household, which includes Sara Knight’s husband and 2-year-old son, Tuesday night is now fish night. The family plans to eat some form of seafood – but not the battered and fried kind – on that night. And now instead of just having spaghetti meals with garlic bread, she makes sure to add a vegetable to round out the meal.

Making healthier eating choices has helped Knight lose 75 pounds and go down 10 sizes in her clothes, she said.

Picking up tips

During the shopping tour that’s part of the Sedgwick County Extension Office’s Daddy and Me cooking class, nutrition educator Shirley Buchanan shared tips with the participants about how to make healthier choices when grocery shopping. The tour is part of a free, five-week cooking class that allows parents and kids to interact in a healthy way. A similar Mommy and Me cooking class is also offered.

Matt Bucher and his 9-year-old daughter Brooklynn are learning healthy tips from the class. His preferred method of cooking is grilling, and he’s learned that even fruits, like peaches and pineapples, can be grilled, which adds another healthy variation.

“We could probably eat more fruits and vegetables,” he said, about healthy-eating tips he learned in the Daddy and Me cooking class. “When we made turkey burgers, we added bell peppers, so I’ve learned there are ways to add vegetables to meals.”

During the shopping challenge that concluded the Daddy and Me shopping trip, a packet of brown rice was in the Buchers’ basket. Finding ways to get more whole grains into their diet is going to be a challenge, but “I’m excited to try the brown rice,” Bucher said.

Through its Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, and with help from a grant from the national nonprofit Share our Strength, Kansas State’s Sedgwick County Extension Office offers a wide array of free classes, such as the Daddy and Me and the Mommy and Me classes that provide healthy-eating tips.

The grant also makes it possible to offer free weekly tours at a local grocery store. At the end of the tour, nutrition educator Bonnie Ahlstedt gives participants a $10 shopping challenge, asking them to use the last 30 minutes of the 2-hour class to shop for a healthy meal for a family of four, using the tips she’s given during the tour.

“What we want is for people to make small changes,” said Ahlstedt. “It’s not about changing the whole world. When you make small changes at a time, you’re more apt to stick to them. Something we really stress is getting people to up their fruits and vegetables.”

If you’re on a daily 1,600-calorie plan, you should have three to four servings of vegetables a day and four servings of fruit. If you’re on a 2,000-calories-a-day plan, add an additional serving for each category.

Here are some of the cost-saving, healthy tips Ahlstedt and Buchanan share during their guided shopping tours:

▪  Buy seasonal or buy frozen. To save money, buy fresh fruits and vegetables when they are in season. Out-of-season produce costs more. Frozen produce is also a good option. With today’s technology, manufacturers freeze produce within hours of picking, ensuring the item is at its most nutritional state, Ahlstedt said. Plus neither fresh nor frozen vegetables have added sodium, unless other ingredients like a sauce have been added.

▪ Regrow lettuce. It’s always cheaper to buy uncut lettuce, and it can also be reused, in a sense, Ahlstedt shared. When buying a head of romaine lettuce, chop off the bottom three-to-four inches of the stock and place it in a shallow pan of water. When leaves start sprouting off the stocks, plant in a pot and keep it on a windowsill. While it won’t regrow enough leaves for a family salad, it can provide enough to add to a sandwich or a wrap, another way to incorporate a vegetable into a meal.

▪  Prep your produce. You don’t need to prep all of it when you return home from a shopping trip, but having the produce cleaned and ready to eat will encourage your family to reach for that as a snack. Put them in small containers for quick, individual servings.

▪  Make whole-grain choices. At least half of the recommended six servings of grains daily should be whole grains, according to the American Heart Association. Read labels on bread labeled multigrain or wheat. If the first ingredient is enriched wheat flour, it doesn’t qualify as a whole grain. Substitute brown rice for white rice, which is what Daddy and Me class participants Mark Bryant and his 9-year-old daughter, Kiera, planned to do for a family favorite chicken-and-rice dish.

▪  Eat more seafood. During her tours, Ahlstedt encourages people to eat seafood twice a week. The American Heart Association also recommends twice-a-week servings of fish, citing it as a good source of protein that’s low in saturated fats and high in the omega-3 fatty acids that help decrease health risks.

▪  Go plain. Fruit-flavored yogurts tend to have higher levels of sugar. Buy plain yogurt and add seasonal fresh or thawed frozen fruits to add natural sweetness. Greek yogurt is higher in protein and traditional yogurt is higher in calcium, so keep that in mind when buying yogurt, Ahlstedt pointed out.

▪  Add fruit not sugar. Most of the cereals lining shelves at stores are high in sugar. Buy one that has less than 6 grams of sugar per serving. To add sweetness, add fresh fruit.

This story was originally published October 6, 2015 at 2:19 PM with the headline "Free programs teach families how to buy and prepare healthy meals."