NNLM Network of the National Library of Medicine

Programs

National Nutrition Month^® is recognized each year during the month of March. The campaign focuses on the importance of making informed food choices, developing sound eating habits, and raising awareness of food insecurity. Use one of the suggested materials to incorporate programming ideas such as a healthy recipe exchange or a speaker program for eating well.

• Learn how to Eat Healthy and Shop Simple with MyPlate, an interactive discovery of information and digital resources
• Eat Healthy, Be Active Community Workshops are six curricula that include a lesson plan, learning objectives, talking points, hands-on activities videos and handouts designed to be used by community educators, cooperative extension agents, and others to teach adults in a wide variety of community settings.
• DASH Eating Plan, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, is a a plan created by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to create a heart-healthy eating style for life.
• FNEP Food Label Cards, available for purchase from the University of Missouri Extension office, can help teach how to read food labels. Each non-branded color food label card contains a Nutrition Facts label, a photo of a typical food package, and an ingredient list. The food label cards are printed on 8 ½ x 11 card stock and are appropriate for youth and adults.
• SNAP-Ed Connection is an educational program sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) where you can find recipes and publicly available photos to freely use and supplement any program.
• ​EatRight.org by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recognizes that dietary needs change throughout each stage of life. They offer inclusive dietary plans for all ages, genders, and diseases and conditions.

Handouts

• Cut Down on Added Sugars
• Eat Healthier With These Tools (Infographic) [PDF]
• Quick Tips for Reading the Nutrition Facts Label
• Serving Sizes (English and Spanish)
• Using the New Nutrition Facts Label and MyPlate (Spanish) [PDF]
• What's on the Nutrition Facts Label

Ask a Dietitian

Invite a local dietitian to offer a nutrition health program whether it is how to read food labels, calculate your BMI, or prepare healthy meals. Public health departments and supermarkets often have registered dietitians available to provide cooking and food-related programs for all ages. Also, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ Find a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist online referral service allows you to search a national database of Academy members for the exclusive purpose of finding a qualified registered dietitian nutritionist or food and nutrition practitioner.

Screen a Film

Food, Inc., an Oscar-nominated documentary, is considered "the definitive cinematic investigation of the modern American food industry." This 2008 film connects the dots between big business and government, farmers and consumers, convenience eating and sickness.

Nourish, a series of short PBS films, can spark a meaningful conversation about food, health, and sustainability. The DVD set comes with a curriculum and a Nourish Discussion Guide.

Plant a Seed

Create a library seed exchange program or cultivate your own edible garden with the help of community friends and partners such as County Cooperative Extension Services or a Master Gardener program. Perhaps host a local farmer's market, organize a food pantry, or sponsor a lunch program.

Children's Play

• Whyville Snack Shack is an interactive educational game created by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. To play, point your library browser to http://whyville.net/smmk/top/gates/flax
• For young and old, download and print the Make Smart Choices! Nutrition Label Word Search puzzle in English and Español

Book

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, the author of The China Study and New York Times bestseller Whole, returns with a book examining the shortcomings and confusion within the nutrition industry and outlining steps to improve. In Colin Campbell's newest book, he takes on the institution of nutrition: the history of how we got locked into focusing on “disease care” over health care; the widespread impact of our reverence of animal protein on our interpretation of scientific evidence; the way even well-meaning organizations can limit what science is and is not taken seriously; and what we can do to ensure the future of nutrition is different than its past. The Future of Nutrition offers a fascinating deep-dive behind the curtain of the field of nutrition—with implications both for our health and for the practice of science itself.

The Future of Nutrition | Dr. T Colin Campbell | BenBella Books | 2020 | 350 pages | ISBN: 978-1950665709 |   | WorldCat

Author

For more than 40 years, Dr. T. Colin Campbell has been at the forefront of nutrition research. His legacy, the China Study, is the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. Dr. Campbell is Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University. He has received more than 70 grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding and authored more than 300 research papers. The China Study was the culmination of a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine.

Center for Nutrition Studies

Book

What is the “best” diet? Do calories matter? And when it comes to protein, fat, and carbs, which ones are good and which are bad? Mark Bittman and health expert David Katz answer all these questions and more in a lively and easy-to-read Q&A format. Inspired by their viral hit article on Grub Street—one of New York magazine’s most popular and most-shared articles—Bittman and Katz share their clear, no-nonsense perspective on food and diet, answering questions covering everything from basic nutrients to superfoods to fad diets. Topics include dietary patterns (Just what should humans eat?); grains (Aren’t these just “carbs”? Do I need to avoid gluten?); meat and dairy (Does grass-fed matter?); alcohol (Is drinking wine actually good for me?); and more. Throughout, Bittman and Katz filter the science of diet and nutrition through a lens of common sense, delivering straightforward advice with a healthy dose of wit.

How To Eat: All Your Food and Diet Questions Answered | Mark Bittman and David Katz, MD | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 2020 | 256 pages | ISBN: 978-0358128823 |   | WorldCat

Authors

Mark Bittman is the author of thirty acclaimed books, including the How to Cook Everything series, the award-winning Food Matters, and the New York Times number-one bestseller VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00. For more than two decades his popular and compelling stories appeared in the New York Times, where he was ultimately the lead food writer for the Sunday magazine and became the country’s first food-focused Op-Ed columnist for a major news publication. Bittman has starred in four television series, including Showtime’s Emmy-winning Years of Living Dangerously. He has written for nearly every major newspaper and magazine in the United States and has spoken at dozens of universities and conferences. His 2007 TED talk has more than four million views; in 2015 he was a distinguished fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently teaching at Columbia University’s Mailman School 
of Public Health, editing Heated, an online food magazine, and writing a book about understanding food. Official Website of Mark Bittman

David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM is a preventive medicine specialist and globally recognized authority on lifestyle medicine. He is the founding director of Yale University's Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center (1998-2019); Past President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine; President and Founder of the non-profit True Health Initiative; and Founder and CEO of Diet ID, Inc. Katz is a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine; the American College of Physicians; the American College of Lifestyle Medicine; and Morse College, Yale University. He earned his BA at Dartmouth College; his MD at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine; and his MPH from the Yale University School of Public Health. The recipient of numerous awards for teaching, writing, and contributions to public health, Katz was a 2019 nominee for a James Beard Foundation Award in health journalism and has received three honorary doctorates. He holds multiple US patents; has over 200 peer-reviewed publications; has published many hundreds of online and newspaper columns; has authored/co-authored 17 books to date including multiple editions of leading textbooks in both nutrition and preventive medicine. Recognized by colleagues as the "poet laureate of health promotion," Katz has given keynote addresses in all 50 United States and in countries on 6 continents.

Book

Consumers want to know more about their food - including the farm from which it came, the chemicals used in its production, its nutritional value, how the animals were treated, and the costs to the environment. They are being told that buying organic foods, unprocessed and sourced from small local farms, is the most healthful and sustainable option. Now, Robert Paarlberg reviews the evidence and finds an abundant reason to disagree. He delineates the ways in which global food markets have, in fact, improved our diet, and how "industrial" farming has recently turned green, thanks to GPS-guided precision methods that cut energy use and chemical pollution. He makes clear that America's serious obesity crisis does not come from farms, or from food deserts, but instead from "food swamps" created by food companies, retailers, and restaurant chains. And he explains how, though animal welfare is lagging behind, progress can be made through continued advocacy, more progressive regulations, and perhaps plant-based imitation meat. He finds solutions that can make sense for farmers and consumers alike and provides a road map through the rapidly changing worlds of food and farming, laying out a practical path to bring the two together.

Resetting the Table: Straight Talk About the Food We Grow and Eat | Robert Paarlberg | Knopf | 2021 | 368 pages | ISBN: 978-0525656449 |   | WorldCat

Author

Robert Paarlberg is an adjunct professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and an associate at Harvard's Weatherhead Center. He has been a member of the Board of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the National Research Council, a member of the Board of Directors at Winrock International, and a consultant to the International Food Policy Research Institute, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He is the author of Starved for Science, Food Politics, and The United States of Excess. He lives in Massachusetts.

Book

When Barbara Kingsolver and her family moved from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they took on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume. Concerned about the environmental, social, and physical costs of American food culture, they hoped to recover what Barbara considers our nation's lost appreciation for farms and the natural processes of food production. Since 2007, their scheme has evolved enormously. In this new edition, the entire Kingsolver family, Barbara's husband, Steven, and two adult daughters, Camille and Lily, describe their lives since the first telling of the family's story of living off the land. With Americans' ever-growing concern over an agricultural establishment that negatively affects our health and environment, the Kingsolver family's experiences and observations remain just as relevant today as they were ten years ago. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a modern classic that will endure for years to come.<

Official Website for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life | Barbara Kingsolver | Harper Perennial | 2017 Tenth Anniversary Edition | 432 pages | ISBN: 978-0062653055 |   | WorldCat

Author

Barbara Kingsolver was named one of the most important writers of the 20th Century by Writers Digest. In 2000 she received the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. Critical acclaim for her books includes multiple awards from the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association, among many others. Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky and earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona before becoming a freelance writer and author. At various times in life, she has lived in England, France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia in June 2004, where she continues to reside. Barbara has two daughters, Camille and Lily. Her husband, Steven Hopp, teaches environmental studies.

Official Website of Barbara Kingsolver​

Book

Billie Breslin has traveled far from her home in California to take a job at Delicious!, New York’s most iconic food magazine. Away from her family, particularly her older sister, Genie, Billie feels like a fish out of water—until she is welcomed by the magazine’s colorful staff. She is also seduced by the vibrant downtown food scene, especially by Fontanari’s, the famous Italian food shop where she works on weekends. Then Delicious! is abruptly shut down, but Billie agrees to stay on in the empty office, maintaining the hotline for reader complaints in order to pay her bills. To Billie’s surprise, the lonely job becomes the portal to a miraculous discovery. In a hidden room in the magazine’s library, Billie finds a cache of letters written during World War II by Lulu Swan, a plucky twelve-year-old, to the legendary chef James Beard. Lulu’s letters provide Billie with a richer understanding of history, and a feeling of deep connection to the young writer whose courage in the face of hardship inspires Billie to comes to terms with her fears, her big sister and her ability to open her heart to love.

New York Times Bestseller

Delicious!: A Novel | Ruth Reichl | Random House Trade | 2015 | 416 pages | ISBN: 978-0812982022 |   | WorldCat

Author

Ruth Reichl is a critically acclaimed, best-selling author of Garlic and Sapphires, Tender at the Bone, and Comfort Me with Apples as well as her soon-to-be-released memoir, Save Me the Plums. Delicious! is her first novel. Ms. Reichl was editor-in chief of Gourmet magazine for ten years. She has been honored with 6 James Beard Awards and numerous other honors for her journalism. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in the History of Art from the University of Michigan and lives in Upstate New York with her husband, Michael Singer, a television news producer.

Official Website of Ruth Reichl

Interview

Book

Most of what we’re consuming today in Western society is no longer the product of nature but of food science, argues Michael Pollan. The result is what he calls the American Paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become. With the book, In Defense of Food, Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

#1 New York Times Bestseller

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto | Michael Pollan | Penguin Books | 2009 | 256 pages | ISBN: 978-0143114963 |   | WorldCat

Author

Michael Pollan is an acclaimed author and journalist, contributing to the New York Times Magazine since 1987. Several of his New York Times bestseller books have been adapted for television: Netflix created a four-part documentary series based on Cooked in 2016, and documentary adaptations of In Defense of Food (2015) and The Botany of Desire (2009) both premiered on PBS. Pollan also appeared in the Academy Award-nominated 2009 feature documentary, Food Inc.

​Born in 1955, Pollan grew up on Long Island and was educated at Bennington College, Oxford University, and Columbia University, from which he received a Master’s in English. ​He is currently the Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer and Professor of the Practice of NonFiction at Harvard University. In addition to teaching, he lectures widely on food, agriculture, health, and the environment. In 2010, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife, the painter Judith Belzer, and their son, Isaac.

Official Website of Michael Pollan