Part of the SNAP-Ed Strategies & Interventions Toolkit.*
The Food Talk: Better U (FTBU) curriculum is a direct nutrition education and obesity prevention curriculum taught by paraprofessionals in a classroom setting and focuses on healthy weight management tailored for SNAP-Ed eligible adult Georgians. FTBU includes both nutrition and physical activity (PA) components as weight management and obesity prevention strategies and helps participants increase portion control, decrease intake of sugar-sweetened beverages, make small healthy “shifts” in everyday food choices, and increase PA consistent with the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, MyPlate guidance, and 2018 PA Guidelines for Americans. The curriculum is comprised of a series of four, 90-minute direct education classes that include the following elements: interactive learning activities, interactive sharing among participants, guided PA, cooking demonstrations and recipe tastings, goal setting, and food and/or PA tracking homework.
The Food eTalk website includes a blog, recipes, videos, food glossary, and SNAP-Ed Resources.
Materials associated with the FTBU direct education curriculum include the following: 4 teaching scripts, 4 take-home booklets, 4 evaluation surveys, posters to assist with a food recall activity, sharing session cue cards, sweet enough flip book, food and beverage cards for sweet enough activity, table tents for taste and rate activity, 5 skit scripts for what gets in the weigh activity, sign-in form, graduation certificate, fillable recruitment flyer, and trifold brochure.
Materials are not available for other implementation agencies yet.
FTBU evaluation materials include:
- Formative tools, including focus group and in-depth interview guides
- Participant surveys with measures adopted from the nationally representative surveys and validated measures recommended by the SNAP-Ed Evaluation Framework
- Class observation tool used for process evaluation and focusing on seven key domains: class organization, lessons, recipe demonstration, diet recall data collection, general data collection, class sharing, and physical activity.
*SNAP-Ed Strategies & Interventions: An Obesity Prevention Toolkit for States is a compilation of interventions. The toolkit was developed by USDA's Food and Nutrition Service, The Association of SNAP-Ed Nutrition Education Administrators (ASNNA), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Training and Research Translation (Center TRT), and the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR), a partnership between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes for Health (NIH), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the USDA. It is designed and updated to help state SNAP-Ed administrative and implementing agencies identify evidence-based obesity prevention programs and policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) strategies and interventions to include in their SNAP-Ed plans.