N.E.A.T. (Nutrition Education Activity Training) is an after-school program designed to teach children about the importance of healthy eating and an active lifestyle. The program reaches more than 1,200 children at 39 sites in the Knoxville and greater Knoxville area.
N.E.A.T. Approved is a designation given to sites who adopt nutrition- and physical activity-related policies and best practices that helps create a healthy after-school environment. The designation is a tiered system, where the level of achievement determines a site’s award status: Bronze, Silver or Gold. This year’s list of approved sites is below.
“These afterschool sites have made health a priority,” said KCHD Nutritionist Megan Rodgers. “There have been marked improvements in menu offerings. Staff are role modeling healthy behaviors. Parents are even noticing that their children are requesting more healthy foods. Afterschool programs have the opportunity to help children establish healthy habits at a young age, and N.E.A.T. Approved sites are leaders in the healthy afterschool time frontier.”
When a child attends after-school care at a N.E.A.T. Approved site, they are given a healthy snack or meal and offered more opportunities to be active. During the 2018-2019 school year, twenty-five afterschool programs in Knox County achieved N.E.A.T. Approved Gold status, the highest recognition level, ten sites achieved Silver status and one site achieved Bronze status.
In 2016, the Knox County Health Department received a highly competitive, three-year Project Diabetes grant from the Tennessee Department of Health, to implement N.E.A.T. and other health promotion efforts focused on reducing diabetes and obesity in the community.
According to the CDC, there is a link between healthy eating, physical activity and improved academic achievement of children, which includes many factors such as academic performance, attendance, behavior, concentration and memory. This evidence shows the importance supporting the effort to provide children with the opportunity to be healthy both during the school day and during out-of-school time.
To learn more about N.E.A.T. Approved, visit KCHD’s website.
