About Us

SU Ag Center SNAP-Ed Program

Healthy Living. Healthy Communities.

Our nutrition education programs provide research-based nutrition education that coincides with the USDA Dietary Guidelines and MyPlate Food Guidance System. Year round, our programs are available and innovatively tailored to meet our communities’ nutritional needs. Our programs include: Nutrition Education, Food Safety, Healthy Recipes, Physical Activity, Gardening and Community Involvement.

SNAP-Ed is the nutrition promotion and obesity prevention component of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the U.S. domestic hunger safety net formerly known as Food Stamps that provides economic benefits to eligible, low-income individuals and families for food purchases.

It is a federally funded grant program that supports evidence-based nutrition education and obesity prevention interventions and projects for persons eligible for SNAP through complementary direct education, multi-level interventions, and community and public health approaches to improve nutrition.

The SU Ag Center’s SNAP-Ed program has been in existence for more than 20 years and operates in 13 parishes throughout the state of Louisiana: Ascension, Avoyelles, Calcasieu, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Jefferson-Davis, Madison, Morehouse, St. James, Richland, and West Carroll.

SNAP-ED Services

SNAP-Ed teaches people using or eligible for SNAP about proper nutrition and how to make their food dollars stretch further. SNAP-Ed participants also learn to be physically active. The program is offered through a collaborative contract with the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.

SNAP recipients typically purchase food items based on family preferences, cultural food practices, and other socioeconomic factors despite public health recommendations or USDA Dietary Guidelines. Consequently, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular, and cerebrovascular disease and specific forms of cancer (breast and colon) ranks high among leading causes of death for all racial groups in the United States.

Reference: United States Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service