Deputy Nutrition Ambassadors Speak About Teaching Their Peers

July 17, 2018

People with disabilities hear a lot of "you can't eat this" or "you can't eat that" from health care professionals, but do not receive much nutrition education other than that.  The Nutrition is for Everyone Oklahoma (NIFE OK) project allowed us to actually show people which foods are healthy and which foods are not.  We also taught some basic cooking skills that most people do not know and demonstrated how it can be cheaper to eat at home instead of fast food.  The peer-to-peer teaching was important because everyone was more than willing to listen.  During each training, we encouraged people to make goals and most people made their goal to drink less soda.  We noticed at our monthly People First meetings that people started coming in with more water instead of their usual soda.  We also, as a community, agreed to change our snacks at that meeting to vegetables and fruit from our usual donuts and this will continue to happen.  As Deputy Nutrition Ambassadors, this gave us more experience teaching our peers and we are now leaders in our community and will continue to be advocates for people with disabilities and encourage others to eat healthy to improve their health.

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