With government funding being retracted at an incredible rate, a new local victim has been claimed. The Marshall K-12 Nutritional Education Program has officially been cut from the university’s repertoire.
Beginning in 2007 and following the goal of proper nutritional guidance for all, the program reached countless students from across the state. Its 18 years of work was led by students and trained dietitians from the Marshall Department of Nutrition and Dietetics.
The program included several facets of nutritional availability. It provided students with tokens over the summer, which could be cashed in at participating stores for produce and organic materials, allowing for a wider range of nutrition. NEP also distributed gardening tools and materials to schools, allowing them to develop student gardens. Professor of dietetics Mary Kathryn Gould expanded upon this facet of NEP.
“The kids would grow the vegetables and harvest the vegetables. Sometimes, they used them in the cafeterias. It just depended on how well they grew,” Gould said.
One of the more public aspects of NEP was school visits to students across the state, which typically included a lesson on nutrition. One of its main educational tools was MyPlate, a visual of portion ratios for the different food groups. Simple methods like MyPlate provided students a better understanding of the composition and importance of food.
The visits also incorporated the introduction of students to a nutritionally valuable food or snack. Professor of dietetics Kelli Williams explained the importance of this activity within the lessons.
“(Students) may not be exposed to a lot of the vegetables that we talked about in the lessons, and we wanted to get them exposed to all sorts of different sorts of different types of foods from food groups,” Williams said.
The NEP’s operations were funded directly through federal grants, specifically SNAP-Ed. SNAP-Ed was targeted late summer 2024 through the signing of the Big Beautiful Bill, a piece of legislation that included a wide variety of fiscal and economic changes.
The loss of NEP does not only impact the community, but also affects students dependent on nutrition education. Schools often lack proper curricula or personnel to address nutritional education, leaving the task up to outside sources, like NEP. When asked about the void left by the program, Williams was not optimistic.
“We have enough resources left over to provide small incentive items to the students to carry home that message, but that’s all we have,” Williams said.
The impact spans the five counties covered by NEP and impacts children across the state dependent on similar programs.
“It is very important to remember also that federal cuts not only impact our program, but every program like us,” Williams said.
Claire Johnson can be contacted at [email protected].
