Children, Youth and Young Adults
Establish a food skills baseline for children, youth, and young adults in Minnesota to determine the extent of the food skills gap.
Use food skills baseline assessments to inform district-wide wellness policies and design of food skills programs and curriculum in school districts.
Establish dedicated state staff positions for family and consumer sciences education and health education.
Provide training, continuing education credits, and incentives to early childcare providers who incorporate food skills education into their programs.
Train teachers, coaches, and other educational staff to guide children of all ages to make healthy food choices, using evidence-based methods.
Offer adequate support for curriculum development and use, teacher training, and school resources, toward the goal of basic food skills for every Minnesota middle-school student.
Require and train teachers to incorporate food skills education into existing curricula, particularly in math, science, and social studies.
Require and financially support K-12 guidelines development for food skills education in Minnesota schools.
Support school gardens, curriculum development, and teacher training to teach all Minnesota second graders the principles of plant biology and basic gardening skills.
Increase number and capacity of farm-to-school programs.
Institute and sustain college-level curricular requirements and extra-curricular options, including farm-to-cafeteria efforts, to strengthen students’ food skills.
Ensure support and training needed for tribal communities to host culture camps focusing on traditional foods and related teachings.
Adults
Increase adults’ opportunities to learn food skills at schools, worksites, community education classes, hunger relief programs, and food stores.
Provide patients with appropriate information about food skills education and referrals to relevant community resources, when they visit their healthcare provider.
Offer knowledge and resources needed by food harvesters to harvest wild rice; catch, gather, and preserve fish, plant foods, and berries; and tap, process, and store maple syrup and sugar.
Establish accessible, adequate gardening plots, equipment-lending libraries, garden education options, and seed and seedling giveaways.
Offer employees paid time and free courses to strengthen food skills, and offer flexible work schedules to accommodate time needed to plan and prepare healthy meals, as part of employee wellness programs.
Ensure adequate state and federal funding for healthy food skills-related education for SNAP/EBT and WIC participants.
FoodService Professionals
Create ideal professional standards for nutrition and food skills core competencies for foodservice professionals.
Teach knowledge and skills needed by foodservice professionals to continue to serve healthy meals.
Improve foodservice professionals’ wages.
Increase funding available for schools to obtain necessary facilities upgrades, kitchen equipment or other food-preparation and teaching resources.