SNAP-Ed: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education

University of Minnesota’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) team helps low-income individuals and families make diet and lifestyle choices to improve their health and prevent obesity. Our education provides Minnesota families with tools and strategies to help counter the effects of food insecurity, poverty, and obesity. 

How the SNAP-Ed team helps Minnesota families

• Partnering with organizations to reach individuals and families in their communities.
• Teaching participants how to shop for healthy foods, within a limited budget, at area stores and farmers markets.
• Demonstrating quick, easy, fun ways to prepare healthful, delicious meals.
• Helping communities create and sustain environments that support people in their efforts to eat healthier foods and become more physically active.
• Providing training to community partners on changing practices and systems to create a healthier environment.

How our education is delivered

• To individuals and families, from elementary-school students to older adults, who are eligible for SNAP benefits or other federal assistance programs, or meet our program income guidelines.
• In a variety of community settings, such as food shelves, schools, community centers, and public housing sites.
• Free to all individuals and families who meet income guidelines.
• In English, Spanish, Somali, Hmong, and Oromo, depending on audience needs and the availability of health and wellness coordinators.
• In every county in Minnesota.

To see SNAP-Ed in action, watch the two and a half minute video below featuring Andrew Doherty, a SNAP-Ed health and wellness coordinators and registered dietitian nutritionist:

SNAP-Ed: Making the Healthy Choice the Easy Choice (PDF) — Use this brochure to tell others about the SNAP-Ed program at University of Minnesota Extension.

Children's Garden in Residence

In 2019, our colleagues from Minnesota Landscape Arboretum traveled across Minnesota to train Master Gardeners, SNAP-Ed health and wellness coordinators, and 4-H coordinators on the Children’s Garden in Residence curriculum (CGR). SNAP-Ed organized 28 programs across the state throughout 16 counties, reaching a total of 571 children. CGR uses a science-based, hands-on approach curriculum for discovery in the garden. The curriculum is broken into seven weeks. Each two-hour session featured gardening, science, and nutrition lessons that were tied together by topic.

Many of the kids had never gardened and were surprised to discover how easy it was to grow vegetables. The gardeners harvested produce to take home each week and were able to use some of the foods for the recipes prepared during the nutrition lesson. The students kept journals that tracked the height of their plants and reflected on what they had learned each week.

SuperShelf 

SuperShelf helps food shelves become more dignified food access spaces and increases nutrition security for communities across the state of Minnesota. The SuperShelf team works with food shelves to help transform their space, their operations and their culture to align with SuperShelf’s near-decade’s worth of research and practice-based methods. As of 2025, there are over 80 certified SuperShelves with many more currently on their way to SuperShelf status. 

SNAP-Ed Health and Wellness Coordinators are trained to be SuperShelf Consultants and work with food shelves to help shoppers access a variety of nutritious food in the easiest and most dignified way possible. Food shelves receive support and technical assistance from their SuperShelf Consultant as they navigate the transformation process. After completing the SuperShelf process and maintaining the changes for a period of time, food shelves are eligible to become certified a SuperShelf. SuperShelf methods and values help ensure positive experiences for food shelf shoppers by:

• Creating a food shelf environment that is shopper-centered by respecting individual food choices.

• Increasing access to a variety of healthy and culturally connected foods.

• Transforming existing food shelf spaces to emulate retail grocery environments

• Meeting specific SuperShelf standards, methods, and values.

I CAN Prevent Diabetes

SNAP-Ed health and wellness coordinators have been working to help prevent diabetes throughout Minnesota by teaching I CAN Prevent Diabetes (ICPD). The program helps participants lower their risk of diabetes by losing weight, adopting healthy eating habits and increasing physical activity. In Worthington, we partnered with the YMCA. Participants take ICPD classes, then a session with a personal trainer or they take a Zumba class. The YMCA provides childcare and offers reduced cost memberships for ICPD participants. Classes are held weekly for 16 weeks then monthly for the balance of the year. 

Real Life, Good Food

Barriers such as lack of time, childcare and transportation can make it difficult for many eligible individuals to attend in-person SNAP-Ed classes. Recently conducted focus groups indicated that while eligible young adults were interested in accessing online nutrition education, they were not interested in traditional, module based online courses. Real Life, Good Food is an innovative online education tool that can expand reach to new audiences using a self directed website featuring healthy eating tips, physical activity ideas and recipes.

Go Wild 

Go Wild with Fruits & Veggies and Go Wild with Whole Grains are fun, evidence-based programs. They were developed in Minnesota for 3rd to 5th grade students using animal characters to encourage students to eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains and to be more physically active. In 2019, we reached over 4,500 students!

Menahga Elementary School got the whole school to ‘Go Wild.’ The program was presented to the 4^th grade class, participating in a daily activity challenge — Walk to the Headwaters. The rest of the school incorporated the program into their monthly school assemblies. They had physically active games, guest speakers and taste testing. The families of the 4th grade participants told us they were eating more whole grain foods, checking labels, and using recipes from class. Parents remark their children were more physically active at home and making healthier choices.

Counties served: Beltrami, Cass, Carlton, Chisago, Cook, Crow Wing, Isanti, Itasca, Kanabec, Koochiching, Lake, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Pine, St. Louis and Todd.

Counties served: Becker, Clay, Clearwater, Douglas, Grant, Hubbard, Kittson, Lake of the Woods, Marshall, Mahnomen, Norman, Otter Tail, Pennington, Polk, Red Lake, Roseau, Traverse, Wadena and Wilkin.

Counties served: Blue Earth, Brown, Dodge, Faribault, Fillmore, Freeborn, Goodhue, Houston, Le Sueur, Mower, Nicollet, Olmsted, Rice, Sibley, Steele, Wabasha, Waseca and Winona.

Counties served: Big Stone, Chippewa, Cottonwood, Jackson, Lac qui Parle, Lincoln, Lyon, Martin, Murray, Nobles, Pipestone, Pope, Redwood, Renville, Rock, Stevens, Swift, Watonwan and Yellow Medicine.

Counties served: Benton, McLeod, Meeker, Sherburne, Stearns and Wright.

Counties served: Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott and Washington.