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Colorful plate, balanced diet key to nutritional meals

Eight pantries hope to educate clients on preparing healthier meals.

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By Everdeen Mason, Staff Writer 7:18 PM Sunday, September 13, 2009

HAMILTON — Local food pantries and educators been trying to encourage families to prepare healthy food.

The problem is, people do not think they can afford healthy food, said Dan Remley, an extension educator in Family & Consumer Sciences and Community Development of the Butler County OSU extension.

“People who (cannot afford food) tend to have higher (body-mass indexes) and a tendency towards obesity, it’s a really complex problem,” he said.

To combat this, eight pantries in the community have adopted the “Rainbow method” of color-coding food groups. The goal is to get as many colors as possible in a meal, Remley said.

Places such as Serve City in Hamilton and the Middletown Choice Pantry have had trouble getting people to adopt the method.

“I think it’s that when people are in desperate situations we’re not thinking food groups and healthy eating,” said Barbara Klei, executive assistant for Middletown Family Services.

Serve City’s pantry director Glenna Carroll said another issue was changing people’s eating habits.

“It’s kind of a challenge because most of the people they’ve been raised to eat differently,” she said.

“More and more our Hispanic population is beginning to be a concern,” Klei said. “Other (pantries) have a higher concentration of Hispanic clients and try to cater to their eating habits. We do to some extent, need to step that up.”

Both pantries have found a successful tactic to be cooking demonstrations done by Tina Luersman, an extension program assistant in family nutrition.

“People are more aware of what they are selecting and how to make a plate that is very colorful,” she said. “Making a plate that’s colorful gives them better health more energy and helps them fight diseases.”

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