Data & Research
FNS launched the Eat Smart. Play Hard. campaign to promote USDA’s healthy eating and physical activity messages to children ages 2–18 and their caregivers. This campaign is an FNS agency-wide initiative and represents the latest effort by FNS to meet its strategic goal of improving the nutrition of children and low-income adults while at the same time addressing the major public health issue of the increasing prevalence of obesity among our nation’s youth.
This report fulfills the request from Congress in the House Appropriations Committee Report (HR 107-116), which accompanied the Agriculture Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2002.
This is a report of the National Academies' Institute of Medicine (Food and Nutrition Board), published here by permission.
In 1994, FNS initiated the WIC Nutrition Education Demonstration Study. The demonstration had two components: a comparison of the effects of innovative and traditional WIC nutrition education for prenatal participants; and a study of the feasibility and effectiveness of providing nutrition education to preschool (three-and-four-year-old) WIC participants. The report summarized here describes the design and implementation of the child nutrition education demonstration and presents findings describing the effectiveness of the demonstration.
The study evaluated the effectiveness of three innovative approaches to nutrition education in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Two of these education innovations were designed for educating prenatal women; the third focused on nutrition education for 3- and 4-year-old WIC participants. This executive summary and report describe the evaluation and results of the educational interventions for prenatal women.