Meal Planning, Food Purchasing, and Cooking

 Includes suggestions for grocery shopping such as: going to farmers markets, mapping products by location within the store to their status in the MyPlate food groups, making a list, and consulting nutritional information on food labels.

 Showcases a short video with a tour of a several farmers markets illustrating the benefits of buying fresh locally-grown foods. Includes a top-ten list of reasons to shop at a farmers market.

Collates sets of quick and cost-effective recipes grouped by audience: school or child care providers, nutrition educators, USDA food program staff, or the home cook.

Contains winning entries from the Recipes for Healthy Kids Challenge, an effort to develop creative, nutritious, and tasty recipes that schools can easily incorporate into their menus.

Provides a searchable database of locations, directions, operating times, product offerings, and accepted forms of payment for farmers markets across the United States.

Lists guidelines to help select the healthiest products of the major food groups while shopping, follow food safety best practices in grouping and selecting purchases, and understand what a label means when it says "organic."

Contains cooking guidelines to benefit the heart and overall health including: healthiest preparation methods, suggestions for substituting lower-fat or no-fat ingredients, and snacking tips.

Suggests ways to make nutritious choices at the grocery store: which foods to buy from each major food group and how to read food labels. Provides an overview of the Heart-Check certification program and a grocery list builder

Defines types of sellers of sustainable foods including community supported agriculture programs (CSAs), farmers markets, food-buying clubs, co-ops, and grocery stores. Includes links, directories, and resources to help you find sources of sustainable food.