COMMUNITY-BASED NUTRITION EDUCATION

Today, our challenge is to give people the tools they need to sort out all of the conflicting nutrition messages white continuing to trust the quality of the food they purchase. Community-based nutrition education is one answer to this challenge. We need to make such education user-friendly, as well as raise our expectations so that more people can participate in education. Community-based education implies that people themselves are involved in the design, implementation and, most importantly, the evaluation of the educational process. This will require considerably more time, but effectiveness cannot be sacrificed for efficiency. The focus of such nutrition education should be on outcomes, letting the inputs be flexible. This is difficult because the nutrition professional loses control over the process, transferring ownership of it to the participant. The primary need in today's world is to let people more fully own their success and lack of success by encouraging them to be full partners in the process.