Healthy Eating: Community | Try This West Virginia

Start a diabetes coalition.

Since 2000, more than a dozen communities have created coalitions.

Grocery stores: Feature healthy items

Encourage healthy eating with healthy checkout aisles and displays.

Teach people to read labels

Hold classes in schools and grocery stores

Check your food pantry offerings

Offer nutritious food and cooking classes.

Every year, Margo Davis of Rock Cave preserves a cellar full of vegetables, fruits, and meats. “Most of our great-grandmas knew how to do it all,” she said. If you freeze, cure, smoke, pickle or otherwise preserve fresh food, you can eat well all year round and save money in the process, she said. “But most people don’t know how to do it anymore....

Raise food, bees and hens in town.

In some towns, it’s legal. Is it in yours?

Promote home gardening

As late as the 1950s, most West Virginians raised a garden. By the year 2000, after processed foods saturated the market, only about a third of West Virginians raised a garden, and gardens were smaller, according to the American Gardening Association. Now the number is rising again. “People are starting to understand how harmful processed food can be to your health,” said Mira Danilovich, who directs...

Start a diabetes coalition.

Grocery stores: Feature healthy items

Teach people to read labels

Check your food pantry offerings

Encourage food preservation

Raise food, bees and hens in town.

Promote home gardening