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This menu provides various strategies to help pantries encourage clients to choose healthier options, including gardening, pantry set-up, staff and volunteer training, cooking demonstrations, nutrition classes, healthy food procurement, nudging clients, brochures/posters/visual aids, and client choice at the pantry.
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Menu of Options for Pantries Helping Clients Choose Healthier Options
Garden • Own and work garden • Own and work small garden with easy, key items (can focus on non-refrigerated produce) • Work with community garden/ers to receive extra produce (can focus on non-refrigerated produce) • Can local gardeners “plant a row” for the hungry?
Pantry Set-up • Pantry is set up to encourage healthier choices with displays, prominent location of healthy items over others, and signage that may change (quarterly, annually, etc. – Harvesters supplies signs) • Display nutrition info/F2E or not?/stoplight signs next to food or organize food by healthiest to least healthy in each food group • Prominent location and display of healthy items over others (maybe make a wall with all Diabetic friendly foods on that wall, or all “Red” foods together, then all “Green” foods together, then “Yellow” for stoplight approach) • Help draw clients eyes to the healthier food • Signs in shopping carts that encourage certain behaviors • Displays for healthy food items (permanent or temporary) • Putting produce or healthy options at beginning and end of “line” • (Can coolers be purchased/used if not fridges?)
Staff & Volunteer Training • Harvesters trains ordering person on how to choose/identify healthier options for their pantry • Harvesters trains staff/volunteers on basic MyPlate and helps with population specific health issues (or gives them local resources like Hy-Vee dietitians) • Harvesters trains pantry staff on cooking demo how-to’s • Harvesters can train pantry staff on culinary skills on certain tricky items • Harvesters helps with Safe Food Handling questions
Cooking Demonstrations • Pantry offers cooking demonstrations at pantry using their staff/volunteers (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) • Harvesters offers cooking demonstrations at pantry • Simple tastings of healthy ready-to-eat items, like cutting up watermelon or new/unique bread for samples (no cooking required)
Nutrition Classes for Clients • Agency offers Harvesters’ nutrition on-going classes to their clients • Agency offers Harvesters’ one time nutrition classes to their clients • Agency is trained to offer classes themselves as Trained Teachers
Healthy Food Procurement • Harvesters helps brainstorm additional opportunities for pantries to get healthy food for pantry (partnering with farmers, farmers markets, Giving Grove, requesting specific foods for their food drives/donors from Cooking Matters list, etc.)
Nudging Clients • Group food next to each other at pantry to make a meal with them, called “clustering”. For example, group pasta with marinara sauce, vegetables, and a cheese. • Display and distribute healthy recipes from Harvesters website or other sites with items in pantry (near the item itself) • Allow clients to open bag to sample.
Brochures/Posters/Visual Aids • Agency distributes Harvesters’ healthy newsletter with recipes to clients • Agency posts Harvesters’ healthy newsletter for clients at site • Pantry finds and offers Health and Disease brochures specific to clients’ needs (Harvesters can help) • Pantry hangs visuals in pantry or waiting room (MyPlate posters, posters about why item is healthy, if it’s low in sugar or sodium, etc.)
Client Choice at Pantry • Full Client Choice pantry • Not full client choice in pantry shopping, but clients can fill out a “request” form for pantry staff to “fill their order” based on MyPlate recommendations in Agency Handbook, or choices between 2 options in each food group category and staff “fills order” • Pantry uses Agency Handbook MyPlate recommendations to create healthy pre-packed bags for clients • Pantry staff encourage/make clients choose from MyPlate recommendations in Agency Handbook when shopping • Even if no client choice, agency offers healthy perishables when possible as choice (can be refrigerated or not) • Pantry offers healthy MyPlate /F2E foods as much as possible – both shelf stable and perishable
Health Screenings • Partner with local dietitians, nurses to offer on-going regular health screenings for clients during pantry to see how they are improving/declining in health (Harvesters can help)