Celebrating Diversity: Approaching Families through Their Food.

This book is designed to help nutrition educators communicate with an increasingly diverse clientele on issues related to food and nutrition, presenting strategies and ideas that can be used with families from various cultural backgrounds. Chapter 1 addresses the changing cultural demographics in the United States and the relationship between culture and food. Chapter 2 focuses on techniques for using food stories and recipes to open dialogues about nutrition. Chapter 3 examines changing food patterns among immigrants and cultural groups, while Chapter 4 discusses food availability, family traditions, status foods, traditional preparation, seasonings, frequency of consumption, health beliefs, traditional celebrations, and economics. Chapter 5 focuses on communicating with clients from different cultural groups, stressing the need to listen and observe, combine nutrition with social events, reach the right family members, and acknowledge the importance of the age and experience of family members. Chapter 6 presents strategies for working within community groups, while Chapter 7 addresses the challenges of working in a multilingual environment. Chapter 8 provides practical advice for finding out what clients are eating, sharing important nutrition messages with them, and using resources available in the community. (Contains a list of 23 resource materials. (MDM)