PORTLAND
For the past three years, nutrition educators like Emma Veilleux and Brenna Albert have been leading tours in grocery stores as part of an effort to teach people about healthy food choices while also stretching their limited food budget.
In 2012, only 10 people took a store tour as part of the Cooking Matters program. Since then, however, the program has dramatically increased in popularity with 1,800 people taking advantage of the program in 2014.
Cooking Matters is one of a handful of education programs offered through Maine SNAP-Ed, which is funded by the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In Maine, that program is administered by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and implemented through a contract with the University of New England. Utilizing the Healthy Maine Partnership (HMP) agencies statewide as access points for SNAP-Ed delivery, the goal is to educate Maine SNAP recipients on low-cost, healthy eating and active lifestyles. 
HMPs are supported through a network of various funding streams, which include leveraging grants and tobacco-settlement funds with federal dollars. The result is that each of the SNAP-Ed programs are free and readily available for those who need them. 
ACCESS Health implements SNAP-Ed programming in Sagadahoc County. Healthy Casco Bay covers Brunswick and Harpswell in Cumberland County.
According to the USDA, usage of the SNAP program in Maine has declined slightly from a high of 252,860 people in Fiscal Year 2012 to 230,536 in FY2014. But that still amounts to roughly 1 in 6 people receiving SNAP benefits, so shopping education and cooking tips remain important programs for  recipients.  
Veilleux, a registered dietitian working with Healthy Portland — one of 26 Healthy Maine Partnership groups — offers tours each week at the Back Cove Hannaford as well as classes such as “Teaching 10 Tips” at some of the public feeding programs throughout the city. 
Nationally, there are more than 22.7 million households (46 million people) receiving SNAP benefits, to the tune of $70 billion in FY2014. But that worked out to only $257 per month for the average household. In Maine, the benefit was less. The 122,690 households (230,536 people) averaged $218. 
While it’s certainly helpful, that amount is not likely to meet all of a family’s food needs for a month, so education programs are helpful.
“It’s extremely important to pair education programs such as Cooking Matters with providing people with food. Because of that philosophy, you’re going to teach a man to fish and they’re going to go out and do that work on their own,” explained Courtney Kennedy of Good Shepherd Food-Bank in Auburn, the largest anti-hunger organization in the state. (See “Feeder System: Good Shepherd fosters network to get goods from donors to diners,” February 2015 issue of Healthy Living).   
“So the premise behind Cooking Matters is providing nutrition education to low-income families to support them in making healthy food choices at home, so when they do have their SNAP benefits … they’re thinking about what foods they want to buy their families,” continued Kennedy. “Maybe a bag of potatoes versus a bag of chips.”
The Hannaford tours, for example, allow Veilleux to explain the importance of unit pricing and the Healthy Stars program, which uses a formula to consider the nutritional information in foods and ranks them with zero to three stars. 
While the stars program is unique to Hannaford supermarket, most major grocery stores offer standard unit pricing to help comparison shoppers. For example, a jar of peanut butter would include price per ounce as well as the total cost of the item. It allows a shopper to quickly determine which brand is cheaper, or whether it is a better deal to buy the 48 ounce container, or three of the smaller jars. 
It’s a basic shopping strategy that Veilleux says is new to some people taking the tour. 
Learning to read nutrition labels and comparison shopping are two key concepts of the class. Participants also discuss buying fruits and vegetables on a budget, identifying whole grains and tips for sticking to a food plan. They’ll get a free workbook of recipes and tips and a reusable grocery bag. Hannaford also issues a gift card so participants can take the “$10 Challenge.” The goal is to utilize the shopping strategies to buy food for one healthy family meal. (See related sidebar on page 8.) 

Hands on learning

Some SNAP-Ed classes are offered as part of adult education programs, or within schools where 50 percent or more of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. (See related sidebar on page 11.) Others like Cooking Matters at the Store, or a “Teaching 10 Tips” program that may solicit participants following a free public meal, can be offered by themselves. 
In order for these educational programs to succeed, they require a partnership at the local level. One such partner is Wayside Food Programs of Portland. 
According to Julie Harrison, Wayside’s community meals manager, her organization offers 11 free meals a week in 10 locations around the city, including serving more than 100 children and some family members supper each Monday night at two public schools.
“These are kids who really need the meals they’re getting,” she said. “They’re from very poor families.”
Wayside offers its feeding programs year-round. 
“We’re trying to partner with Healthy Portland at the meals we offer,” she said following the Feb. 10 meal at Hope Gate Way United Methodist Church on High Street. “They have a captive audience. At other sites, we have people who will come early for the class.”
On Feb. 10, following the free meal — a delicious and healthy lobster bisque, sandwiches, fruits and salad, capped off with a piece of blueberry or cherry pie for dessert — Veilleux set up in a corner to demonstrate how to create a healthy veggie stuffed pita.
The meal is free, and there is no expectation that people have to sit through a demonstration in order to eat. It’s just an opportunity for anyone who would like to learn more, and maybe sample a new food.
As Veilleux sautéed vegetables and people gathered around her table, she discussed the USDA’s Choose My Plate visual that replaced the decades-old food pyramid. 
“The big take home message is that you want to be eating half your plate as fruits and vegetables,” Veilleux told the half-dozen participants. “So the recipe that we are making today has lots of vegetables in it and it would fit in with that well.”
Another piece of the plate includes grains, so she offered a visual lesson centered around whole grains versus refined grains. 
Whole wheat bread would be a better alternative to white bread, Veilleux explained, noting that when you have white bread, most of the fiber and the nutrients that are in that grain are stripped away leaving “this nice piece of white bread that doesn’t have much nutrition left. So that would be the case for white rice or anything that’s made out of white pasta, too.”
When one is getting the “whole” grain, it “includes the outer layer called the ‘bran,’ and that’s the most important part where the fiber is and most of the vitamins and minerals,” Veilleux shared. 
To help participants visualize the digestive process, she produced a slice of white bread. Veilleux acknowledge that it “does smell delicious, but it’s not going to hold up as well in your body as the wheat bread does.”
She then poured orange juice — representing stomach acid — over a slice each of white and whole wheat bread to represent digestion. “This is going to show you what fiber does in your body and why it’s so important.”
Fibrous foods do not break down completely in the body, so they are useful to keep one feeling full, lowering cholesterol levels, preventing sugar level spikes and keeping the intestines moving waste along. 
After a few moments, the white bread could not be picked up because it kept breaking apart. The whole wheat bread, which includes much more fiber, held up better and could be picked up intact. 
“So basically when you eat white bread or anything made with white flour it’s being digested so quickly in your stomach and is being shot straight into your bloodstream that you’re a lot hungrier, faster,” she explained. “Because it’s not staying in your stomach as long, it’s making your blood sugar go up a lot more quickly. When you eat a piece of bread that has a lot of fiber in it — this bread has about 3 grams of fiber per slice — it holds together a lot better so that it’s going to take you longer to digest it, which is a good thing. You’re not going to be as hungry if you eat this. It’s not going to send your blood sugar shooting up. It’s going to help with your digestion.”
To meet a goal of 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day, Veilleux told participants that they need to eat things that come from plants: Whole grains such as wheat and oatmeal, as well as fruits and vegetables. Those groups make up three-quarters of the healthy food plate. She noted there is no fiber in meat or dairy, the other two categories.   
Participants were each given a handout with “10 tips for healthy meals” to go over as Veilleux stuffed pitas for them to try.

Who benefits?

Michael Cadodte of Portland said his pita “was delicious,” and noted “they should have more of these” classes. 
He said he gets SNAP benefits and has been to the soup kitchen before and sat in on previous demonstrations. For him, learning about the plate and portion control was a big thing.
Jamie Magaw of Westbrook is a regular at these sessions. She says she likes to listen and learn about the new foods and tries to make them at home as well. Magaw said she utilizes SNAP benefits and local food programs to help make ends meet. 
She explained that even though some people may hesitate to seek help because they don’t want to admit they need it, “I would encourage them to do it anyway,” because of the benefit. She said people who are  struggling with food insecurity should take advantage of the programs available to them, such as food pantries, public meals and educational opportunities like those offered in SNAP-Ed.
Anyone struggling with food insecurity — Feeding America statistics peg it at 15.5 percent of all Mainers and nearly 1 in 4 children — should contact their town office to find out what resources are available. Many towns have food pantries that offer a variety of healthy foods, and some communities such as Bath and Brunswick also have soup kitchens offering a hot, nutritious meal. 

dmadore@timesrecord.com

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