Willcutt: a healthy life is a happy life

Samantha Willcutt is the northeast Mississippi regional registered dietician for the Mississippi State University Extension Service and she works with extension agents and nutrition educators across the northeast Mississippi region to implement Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education, or SNAP-ED.

One big part of Willcutt's work is through the

MSU Extension Service's program named Happyhealthy, which focuses on helping people to live healthier lives by eating healthier food, and Willcutt spoke to the Kiwanis Club of Starkville on Tuesday, February 14 to talk about Happyhealthy.

Started to help make the healthy choice the easy choice, Happyhealthy is a program that strives to persuade children and adults into making that choice. But the challenge in accomplishing that is that Mississippi is first place in the categories Willcutt says they don't need to be in.

According to statistics Willcutt provided, 63 of Mississippi's 82 counties are designated as persistent child poverty areas. That makes up 77 percent of the state. 395 percent of adults and 25.4 percent of children are obese, and 25 percent of all deaths in Mississippi are attributed to heart disease.

With the Happyhealthy program, there is a logic model that Willcutt and her team teach to students in school.

“We come in and do programs with hands-on activity such as cooking,” said Willcutt. “We also work in the community to market healthy foods. We have a lot of competition in that area, but not for healthy foods.”

Imagine if you go to the grocery store, you're going to check out and you see the brand name items down the aisle that are eye-level while the store brand items are harder to see or reach. When it comes down to money, stores try to convince the customer to buy certain products. That is the same strategy Happyhealthy ap

plies in cafeterias in schools with their method called Policy, Systems, and Environmental

Change, or PSE for short. PSE is a way of modifying the environment to make healthy choices practical and available to all community members.

For those who want to

live a healthier life but aren't sure where to start, there is an easy-to-follow guide called Myplate, which was created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help adults and children make healthy

choices for balanced meals and better health.

For more information about Happyhealthy, you can visit their website at www.happyhealthy.ms where you'll find newsletters, tips and videos, recipes, and more.