Healthy Eating 

 

Find Healthy Eating Recipes and Resources

  • Whole Foods Market
    • Whole Foods Market website’s Healthy Eating section is full of great tips, recipes, and videos to help you start eating well and stay motivated. It accommodates vegan, gluten free, and dairy free diets.
  • DASH diet
    • The DASH diet plan was developed to lower blood pressure without medication in research sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health. The diet emphasizes an eating plan rich in fruits, vegetables, and low-fat or nonfat dairy, and whole grains.
  • American Heart Association
    • American Heart Association’s Healthy Eating page has resources for nutrition, lifestyle, seasonal eating, healthy choices, getting started, and simple cooking.
  • Shape Up America!
    • Shape Up America! offers statistics, facts, tips, resources to help families get started making healthier dietary and fitness choices.
  • Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine
    • The Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine website offers information on a range of health issues, such as diabetes and heart disease, and meal plans to help improve these chronic conditions. The website also offers resources to help people interested in eating a vegetarian or vegan diet begin in a balanced, healthful way.
  • Forks Over Knives
    • Forks Over Knives provides resources and recipes to help people eat a plant strong, whole food diet focused on fruits, vegetables, tubers, whole grains, and legumes.
  • Vegetarian Resource Group
  • The Vegetarian Society
    • The Vegetarian Society offers information on and resources for a healthy vegetarian diet organizes National Vegetarian Week, and works to influence policy makers and business leaders.
  • Green Kitchen Stories

 

Value Shopping

  • Quick Tips
    • Set yourself up for shopping success: Come to the store on a full stomach and with a list to avoid the temptation of buying more than what you need.
    • The bulk section offers the biggest bang for your buck and allows you to only buy what you need while still saving.
    • Be prepared to make substitutions based on what’s on sale or in season. Recipes are just suggestions!
      • Eat in season- Sustainable Table’s website offers a quick and easy way to check what’s in season in your state.
    • The Whole Deal is a bi-monthly booklet that offers recipe suggestions, numerous coupons, and money-saving tips. Pick one up at the entrance of a Whole Foods Market store.
    • For even more savings pickup or download Whole Foods Market’s Weekly Coupon Book.
    • Want more information? Check out Whole Foods Market’s Top Ten Money Saving Tips.
  • Share Our Strength
    • Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters website offers recipes and tips to help families stretch their food budgets without sacrificing healthy food.
  • Environmental Working Group
    • After evaluating 1200 foods, The Environmental Working Group created a guide to the items in each food group that regularly pack the most nutrients for the lowest cost. The downloadable guide also includes recipes, a meal planner, price tracker, shopping list template, and many helpful tips. 
  • Good and Cheap
    • Good and Cheap by Leanne Brown is a beautiful, free cookbook pdf was created with SNAP recipients in mind but is useful for anyone wishing to make the most of his or her grocery budget. Brown has included a lot of great money saving tips in addition to the large selection of easy to follow recipes. While the PDF is available for free for anyone to download, through a very successful Kick Starter campaign, Brown has also donated 9,000 hard copy books and sold 24,000 more at cost to organizations that serve low income families. 

 

Films

 

Books

 

Food Access and Health 

 

Find Articles on Food Access and Health

 

Find Health Statistics

  • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
    • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s County Health Rankings provides information at the county level on a myriad of health indicators, including adult obesity and healthy food access.
  • America’s Health Rankings
    • America’s Health Rankings has been tracking Americans health for the past 25 years. The site provides information on health factors at the state level and allows the user to get a full “report” on the health of a specific state and compare it to others.

 

Increase Food Access In Your Area 

 

Find Out if you Qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

  • SNAP to Health
    • The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (previously called food stamps) offers nutrition assistance to eligible, low-income individuals and families. As of June 2014, 46.5 million Americans were participating in SNAP. 
  • USDA
  • Easyfoodstamps.com
    • Propel’s easyfoodstamps.com website simplifies and expedites the process of signing up for SNAP.

 

Advocate Your Local Government for Healthier Zoning

According to the CDC, “Local governments can use their zoning powers to address health and welfare of residents who do not have access to healthy food. Zoning policies can control the food environment through regulating land use of a community by allowing designation of community food gardens and farmers markets, and by limiting commercial food retail, such as fast food businesses; or allowing as-of-right or incentives to those businesses that increase access to healthy food.” Find out more on the CDC’s website. 

 

Start a Farmers Market or Food Co-op

  • The Massachusetts Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs
  • The Farmers Market Coalition
    • The Farmers Market Coalition’s website offers a list of farmers market associations by state. This list is a start but is not comprehensive.  A quick Google search will lend more results in your area.
  • The Food Co-op Initiative
    • The Food Co-op Initiative has put together a great guide on starting. 

 

Find a Community Garden

 

Food Justice

 

Books

Footnote: Some of these resources use the term “food desert” when referring to communities experiencing low access to healthy food. Whole Cities Foundation does not support the use of the term.

 

Find Information on Food Justice

  • The Delta Fresh Foods Initiative
    • ​​The Delta Fresh Foods Initiative (DFFI) is a diverse coalition of community stakeholders committed to establishing sustainable, equitable community food systems in the Mississippi Delta.​
  • The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network
    • The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN) was formed to address food insecurity in Detroit’s African-American community, and to organize members of that community to play a more active leadership role in the local food security movement.​
  • The Food Tank
    • The Food Tank highlights environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty and works to create a networks of people, organizations, and content to push for food system change.
  • Fair Food Network
    • Fair Food Network implements innovative projects to improve healthy food access and works to inform responsible public policy. The organization’s website provides a great list of reports and other publications.
  • The Food Trust
    • The Food Trust leads and collaborates on a number of healthy food access initiatives to affect positive change.
  • Wholesome Wave
    • Wholesome Wave directs programs to increase healthy food access, such as the Double Value Coupon Program and the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program. Wholesome Wave collaborates with 80 community based partners. Its programs have expanded to 33 states and DC and are implemented at more than 500 farmers markets, dozens of community health care centers, hospitals and food hubs throughout the country.
  • USDA: Food Access Research Atlas
  • Feeding America
    • Feeding America utilizes a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs to provide meals and services for more than 46 million people per year. Feeding America’s website is a great source for hunger statistics, maps, personal stories, and research.
  • CDC
    • The CDC’s Healthy Food Environments section has several ideas to improve the health of your community through better access to fresh, healthy food and links to useful articles and resources.
  • Food Research and Action Center
    • The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) works with hundreds of national, state and local nonprofit organizations, public agencies, corporations and labor organizations to address hunger, food insecurity, and their root cause, poverty. The website is a great source for hunger statistics and policy updates.
  • John Hopkins’ Center for a Livable Future
    • The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for a Livable Future promotes research and develops communication about the complex interrelationships among diet, food production, environment and human health, to advance an ecological perspective in reducing threats to the health of the public and to promote policies that protect health, the global environment and the ability to sustain life for future generations.
  • US Food Sovereignty Alliance
    • The US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) works with allies and partners domestically and around the global in actions that raise awareness and help end hunger and poverty by building more just food and farm systems everywhere.
  • Food First
    • The Institute for Food and Development Policy, better known as Food First, works to end the injustices that cause hunger through research, education and action.
  • WhyHunger
    • WhyHunger works to end hunger and poverty by connecting people to nutritious, affordable food and by supporting grassroots solutions that inspire self-reliance and community empowerment. The organization’s hotline refers people in need across the U.S. to food pantries, soup kitchens, summer meals sites, government nutrition programs and grassroots organizations, especially those that provide access to nutritious foods and nutritional support services.
  • World Hunger
    • World Hunger’s “Hunger Notes” consistently reposts articles from major news outlets on hunger and poverty in the United States and abroad.
  • Bread For the World
    • Bread for the World is a faith based organization focused on eradicating hunger domestically and abroad. 

 

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