Health & Nutrition Policy

Today in class we started out with an activity where we had to write something on the chalkboard about food security. It was interesting to see how everyone in the class thought about the term, or what they associated food security with. The next topic that we started was Health and Nutrition Policy. We talked about health objectives such as the Healthy People 2020 and Dietary Guidelines for Americans, as well as guidance systems such as MyPlate. It was interesting to learn about how these guidelines are made and what processes they need to go through to be passed and continued.

I learned about the steps involved in policy making including: defining the problem/setting agenda; formulating alternatives; policy adoption; policy implementation; policy evaluation; and policy termination. We specifically compared this to the WIC program, which gave me a real world perspective. We also talked about the various surveys used to gather nutrition data, one of which being NHANES. They use a multiple pass method when interviewing the public about what they eat, so that all the foods consumed can be recorded.

I also learned a few fun facts that I didn't know before. I did not know that the SNAP program has no guidelines or measures on the specific food that users are buying. Therefore, unhealthy foods could be purchased with the supplemental money. There is however, extra money given to those who purchase healthy foods with their SNAP card. This is a good incentive to eat healthier, and a nice change.