‘Build a Healthy Meal’ videos help stretch dollars

BATON ROUGE — Louisiana Healthcare Connections, a Healthy Louisiana Medicaid health plan, and the LSU AgCenter have partnered in the production of a series of videos to educate Medicaid enrollees and resource-limited families in the purchase, planning and preparation of healthy, budget-friendly meals.
The video series, “Build a Healthy Meal,” features LSU AgCenter extension agents from across the state delivering cooking lessons and demonstrations on topics such as food dollar management, making healthy meals from dollar store purchases and fresh produce preparation.
Video titles include:
—Cook Once, Eat Twice!: How to cook once and eat twice to maximize time and buying power.
­—Dollar Store Meals: How to make healthful, low-cost meals with ingredients that can be purchased at “dollar stores.”
—Cook with Produce from the Farmer’s Market: How to prepare healthy meals using fresh produce.
Additional videos are currently in development and will provide education about creating healthy, well-rounded meals with commodity items and fresh produce.
“Building a healthy meal will aid the everyday consumer over time to change behavior, which leads to healthy decisions about food,” said Dr. Gina Eubanks, LSU AgCenter associate vice president for Food and Consumer Sciences. “Research supports that healthy eating helps to reduce chronic disease such as diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease.”
The Build a Healthy Meal videos are available via the LSU AgCenter website, YouTube channel, and social media platforms, including Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. Louisiana Healthcare Connections is also sharing the videos via its Facebook page and promoting them as a resource for physicians working to address hunger and food insecurity at the point of care.
The project brings together LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Healthcare Connections with the shared goal of increasing nutritional education and healthy food access among Medicaid-enrolled and resource-limited populations in the state.
Both organizations have identified food insecurity, defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as “a lack of access to enough food for an active, healthy life,” as a key factor that negatively affects the health of Louisiana families.
In its December 2018 “U.S. Hunger Atlas,” Hunger Free America found that nearly 25 percent of all children in Louisiana lived in households that could not always afford food from 2015-17, and with 847,556 food insecure individuals, the state ranked as the third most food insecure in the nation.
“Food insecurity affects thousands of families across our state, and because so many in Louisiana are struggling with losses of income due to COVID-19, it is a particularly critical issue right now,” said John Kight, senior vice president of Population Health for Louisiana Healthcare Connections. “We are pleased to work with the LSU AgCenter to provide these families with budget-friendly nutritional information to help them overcome barriers that may negatively impact their health.”
To view the videos, visit www.LSUAgCenter.com/topics/food_health/food/build-a-healthy-meal.