Monthly Meal Kit
Nasrin Nawa |
July 14, 2023
Monthly Meal Kit (MMK), a Nebraska Extension program, puts healthy food from local grocery stores on the table of students experiencing food and nutrition insecurity. MMK is a nutrition education program with the goal of empowering youth to make healthy lifestyle choices by providing the knowledge and tools needed to prepare healthy meals and explore new options for physical activity.
Although MMK was designed to support food-insecure adolescents and their families, it now strives to improve the nutrition knowledge and food preparation skills of youth by using recipes and education from food.unl.edu, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and MyPlate. To date, it has provided nearly 4,500 meal kits for 315 youth and 284 households through nine schools and seven counties in rural Nebraska, increasing access to safe and nutritious food and stimulating the local economy.
Kristi O'Meara, a social worker at Lexington Public School who calls herself a "big advocate for finding resources for families in need," said, "I see daily challenges of paying rent, keeping the electricity on, providing food, going to the doctor, etc., which makes me wonder how they can provide enough and nutritious food for their kids."
Lexington Public School began participating in Nebraska Extension's Monthly Meal Kit program two years ago. O'Meara said they started the program with 50 students and now have 71 high school students and 43 middle school students enrolled in MMK through the school. "This program supports the idea of healthy eating," O'Meara said. "Its purpose is for kids to learn how to cook, prepare nutritious food, and bring more food to the family."
O'Meara shared how some students were enthusiastic about MMK because they were interested in learning new recipes. The grandmother of one student in Lexington Public School (who did not wish to be identified) said her granddaughter is passionate about cooking and experiments with almost all the recipes she receives in the MMK program.
MMK is based on the backpack program. The backpack program provides supplies and items that children can use to prepare meals independently without much adult assistance. "MMK is designed to improve food and nutrition security in older youth," said Beth Nacke, a Food, Nutrition, and Health Extension educator with the Nutrition Education Program whose position is funded by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed).
Nacke shared that "each month, students receive a kit of approximately $30 worth of non-perishable food items, five recipes, and $20 in coupons that can be used to purchase perishable food based on a provided shopping list. The list includes fresh or frozen meat, poultry, dairy, fruit, and vegetables." "They can purchase anything from the list, but only from these categories," Nacke said.
To optimize the program, they conduct a quarterly survey to assess strengths and weaknesses. "We also check the receipts and find out what type of items are the most purchased or what has not been bought enough so we can make a better list," she said. The groceries are only purchased from local stores to support the local economy, as Nacke mentioned.
According to Nacke, youth can choose one of seven preselected kitchen appliance options valued at up to $50 after completing a quarterly feedback survey. Youth are eligible to receive one large appliance over the course of their participation in the MMK program. However, they are also encouraged to select up to ten kitchen utensils needed in their home that are provided with the first kit. These kitchen appliances are meant to help youth prepare the recipes and increase their confidence when making meals.
O'Meara feels great about working with a program that she believes "helps insecure households have more food on the table, and teenagers learn more about nutritional food and recipes."
MMK program was Initially started in 2021 and funded by Nebraska Children and Families Foundation; it is now funded by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and coordinated by Nebraska Extension’s Food, Nutrition and Health and SNAP-Ed’s policy, system, and environmental efforts aligning with the Nebraska pandemic food access coalition work.
To learn more about the Extension Monthly Meal Kit program, visit this website.