Health Heroes

Health Heroes is an interactive library program that provides opportunities for both children and parents to increase their knowledge of the benefits of fruits and vegetables and help them select and prepare healthy and enjoyable snacks. These actions can help promote the formation of healthy lifelong habits and empower children and their families with nutrition knowledge to help combat obesity and promote well-being.

Health Heroes provides opportunities for children and adults to taste-test new fruits and vegetables and learn different and easy ways to prepare them. They will also learn about how different fruits and vegetables help their bodies in different ways. The program is 12 weeks in total, and includes weekly take-home fliers, which summarize the lesson and include discussion questions to further the weekly teachings at home. Each week also includes a challenge for the children that is low- to no cost which involves outreach to the community. Some examples include creating fliers to post in the neighborhood highlighting a nutrition fact, writing a letter to their school cafeteria or principal, or keeping a log tracking conversations with people where the children spread nutrition information that they had learned.

By the end of the 12-week program, children will be able to easily prepare at least 3 new fruit and 3 new vegetable-based snacks that they enjoy, and name a minimum of 3 reasons that eating fruits and vegetables is important to them. Additionally, parents will gain new nutrition knowledge, feel comfortable implementing healthy food choices in their household, and promote these ideas to friends and family.