Evelyn Chavez, a 45-year-old diabetic who lives with her son, daughter and infant grandson in Albuquerque's South Valley, says that until last year she deep-fried all her meat and vegetables in pure lard.

She heaped margarine on white bread at most meals, and she always drank whole milk, since skim milk, or any other low-fat item, was simply not part of her family's diet.

I never knew that lard was bad, that using it regularly could lead to heart disease, Chavez says. So I cooked everything with it.

Since Chavez cooks for the whole family, she says that she and her kids were consuming gobs of fat every day. That is, until she enrolled in a 10-week nutrition education course in fall 1999, offered free of charge by NMSU's Cooperative Extension Service in Bernalillo County.

In the course, Chavez learned about the dangers of high-fat and high-cholesterol diets.

A family affair: Evelyn Chavez with her grandson in Albuquerque's South Valley. Chavez, a 45-year-old diabetic, says the nutrition class taught by Geri Aragon (right) changed her family's lifestyle.

It taught me a lot about what kinds of foods are healthy and how to cook them in healthier ways, Chavez says. Most of all, I learned to cut down on the fat, because it's a strain on the heart and it clogs up the veins and interrupts the circulation. The class made me realize just how much fat I was getting every day.

Now, Chavez says she cooks with canola or olive oil, buys skim or canned milk, serves whole wheat bread, uses butter instead of margarine, and puts a lot more vegetables and fruits on the dinner table.

My family's whole lifestyle has changed as a result of that nutrition class, Chavez says. We've all lost a lot of weight, and we don't feel so tired like before. I lost 60 pounds since the class, and I feel much better now.

The class is part of the Extension Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), a federal and state-funded effort by NMSU to teach healthy eating habits to limited-resource families throughout New Mexico. During the past five years, the program has expanded immensely, with nutrition education classes now available in almost every county and on Native American reservations as well.

EFNEP is improving the eating habits of thousands of families annually in New Mexico, which is essential in a state where widespread poverty and large Hispanic and Native American communities make the population particularly vulnerable to nutrition-related illnesses like diabetes.

With nearly one-fourth of the state's population living in poverty, many New Mexicans are constantly grappling with the ills of inadequate nutrition. In some cases, children do not eat enough for optimum growth, development and school performance. More commonly, people make poor food choices that can lead to chronic problems, such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Because of limited resources, many people here have less access to food, and as a result, they often make less than optimal food choices, says Martha Archuleta, Extension food and nutrition specialist and EFNEP director. A large percentage of our population is Hispanic or Native American, and both of those population groups are at a higher risk for diabetes. If you add in widespread problems of obesity and inactivity, then you've got a huge need in New Mexico for nutrition education to improve people's diets and create more healthy lifestyles.

EFNEP originally began in 1969 as part of a nationwide, federally funded war on poverty to teach low-income families with young children how to cook and eat in healthier ways. Under that initiative, home economists visited families directly in their homes to provide one-on-one nutrition counseling.

In New Mexico, the program's positive impact encouraged Extension to expand its reach to most counties in the state during the 1970s. But despite the increase in time and effort, federal funding for EFNEP remained flat at 1969 levels, eventually forcing most states, including New Mexico, to slowly cut back the initiative. By the early 1990s, the program was limited to just four counties in New Mexico: Bernalillo, Doña Ana, San Miguel and Mora.

Despite the program's contraction, the need for nutrition education remained as strong as ever, so Extension directors in most states began searching for alternative funding, says Kari Bachman, program coordinator for nutrition education in New Mexico. By the early 1990s, many states began tapping into federal food stamp funds, since that program provides assistance for educational initiatives if states choose to apply.

As a result, New Mexico began receiving federal funds in 1995 for a new Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program (FSNEP), which allows Extension personnel to reach out to all food stamp-eligible citizens and families in the state. And, unlike the original EFNEP program-which only permitted Extension to serve limited-resource families who have young children-FSNEP covers families with or without children, as well as kids, pregnant teens, senior citizens and singles.

NMSU is now spending more than $3 million per year on nutrition education around the state, including about $1.3 million in federal funds from the food stamp program, another $1.3 million in matching state funds, plus about $500,000 per year that the original EFNEP program continues to provide.

A tasty life: Home economist Gayla Weaver (left) and nutrition educator Barbara Arispe (right) give a hands-on nutrition class to Verena Sarabia and others as part of the Que Sabrosa Vida program.

Given the increase in funding since 1995, and widespread demand for nutrition education, FSNEP has rapidly spread to most New Mexico Extension offices. Nutrition classes are now available to low-income families and individuals in 28 of the state's 33 counties, plus the Zuni reservation.

Through FSNEP, Extension is able to reach thousands more every year, not only because of increased funding and expanded client eligibility, but also because of NMSU's new structural approach to nutrition education.

Educators are instructed by Extension to teach classes with multiple participants rather than provide one-on-one nutrition counseling. Individual consultation is generally limited to families or clients who have special needs.

Basically, when EFNEP started in the late 1960s, it focused on home visits and working with a few families intensively, Bachman says. Now we concentrate much more on working with groups. It gives us a lot more bang for the buck.

Moreover, Extension home economists now have local assistants in each county to help with the program. Dozens of specially trained, paraprofessional nutrition educators are scattered throughout the state to work with eligible families and individuals. Currently, there are about 55 educators who work 30 hours per week. Each educator aims to graduate a minimum of 75 adults and 100 kids annually from their nutrition classes.

Last year, the state's nutrition educators graduated nearly 7,000 people from the FSNEP classes, including about 2,000 adults and nearly 5,000 kids. In addition, another 2,000 people received nutrition education through EFNEP for a total of about 9,000 people who directly benefited from Extension nutrition education. Many more people indirectly benefited as graduates introduced improved diets and lifestyles into their homes.

The nutrition classes, which provide eight to 16 hours of instruction for adults and four to six hours of class time for kids, teach basic nutrition, food safety, food preparation and food resource management. The courses are based on Michigan State University's Eating Right is Basic, a 16-lesson, flip-chart curriculum that covers everything from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Guide Pyramid to stretching food dollars and teaching food safety.

Long live la familia: The cast from the fictional Sierra family in an episode of the new bilingual telenovela (soap opera) series that teaches nutrition education through everyday situations.

The central goal is to enable graduates to make nutritional choices in line with the Food Guide Pyramid, leading to low-fat diets that include a good balance of grains, vegetables and fruits. Educators also aim to prevent foodborne illness by teaching safe food preparation and storage methods. In addition, classes encourage family interaction as parents and kids learn to prepare nutritious foods at home and how best to manage family food dollars.

Pre- and post-surveys of graduates show an improvement in diet and nutrition-related lifestyle. After attending the classes, about 90 percent of participants improve their nutritional practices, such as making sure their children eat breakfast. The number of participants who eat recommended levels of fruits and vegetables increases by 80 percent and 50 percent, respectively.  Also, 90 percent of participants improve their management of food resources by comparing prices or planning meals.

FSNEP is a very important component in nutrition services to low-income people in our state, says Mike Lester, an income support division manager with the state's Human Services Department, which administers the food stamp program. Food stamps and nutrition education go hand-in-hand in the effort to ensure adequate and healthy diets for people with limited resources. The large number of people who benefit from nutrition courses each year and the feedback we get from graduates tells us that Extension is doing a good job managing the program.

The program's key to success is its practical approach to teaching. Nearly every class involves a cooking lesson in which the students help prepare nutritious, tasty recipes right in the classroom. The recipes are always simple and easy to repeat so that participants are encouraged to try them at home.

Many classes include fun, group activities. Multimedia tools are often used to help capture students' attention and demonstrate course concepts in practical ways.

Because of low literacy, we need to be very interactive in the classroom, so we use videos and other image-based educational tools, plus many hands-on activities like cooking, says Gayla Weaver, Extension home economist for Doña Ana County, who supervises a team of eight nutrition educators. We use a wide variety of games and activities when we teach the youth classes, and we do a lot of that with the adults as well.

In fact, NMSU's Extension home economics and agricultural communications departments have just completed a new, 10-episode video series titled Long Live La Familia, which will soon become a key component of most nutrition classes throughout the state. The videos were designed to mimic the telenovela (soap opera) shows that are popular on Latin American television. The videos center on the fictional, multigenerational Sierra family. The characters interact in everyday situations that involve food issues. The episodes are designed to provoke discussion among classroom viewers.

In one episode, for example, a secretary teaches a father and his son about food labels as the two wait for an appointment. In another episode, a home child care provider works with her niece and pregnant teenage daughter to plan nutritious menus using the Food Guide Pyramid.

A healthy spread: 70-year-old Mary Garcia, a nutrition educator in Sandoval County, watches Bea Castillo try some healthy snacks at an Extension education booth on Santa Ana Pueblo.

The 15-minute episodes combine Spanish and English dialogue that can be understood by both Spanish-only and English-only speakers for a unique bilingual approach that's particularly well-suited to New Mexico. Local actors from Las Cruces were chosen to play the characters in the series, which took two years to produce.

The video series will be distributed around the state to supplement the flip-chart curriculum, which can be somewhat dry, Bachman says. The soap opera presents true-to-life, funny, sad, poignant situations that encourage people to relate the issues to their own lives and facilitate discussion.

In addition to the hands-on approach, the success of nutrition education depends a lot on the ability of home economists and nutrition educators to adapt their course curriculum to the needs and nuances of the local communities.

Allowing for local flexibility when approaching nutrition education is a matter of recognizing the real strength of Extension, Bachman says. The county personnel know what local needs are and they can tailor the program to fit those needs.

Doña Ana County staff, for example, successfully solicited a $5,000 grant from the Paso del Norte Health Foundation-a Texas-based nonprofit organization that funds health education in El Paso, Juarez, Mexico, and surrounding border regions-to launch a local pilot of the Que Sabrosa Vida program, which means What a tasty life.

The program offers a nutrition education course tailored to Spanish speakers along the border who maintain a Mexican-American lifestyle and eating habits. The Que Sabrosa Vida curriculum, based on a newly designed Border Pyramid, retains the usual emphasis on fruits and vegetables and precautions against fatty meats, sweets and junk foods. But it also includes more beans, corn, tortillas and local ingredients, such as Mexican-style cheeses.

About 56 percent of the population in Doña Ana County is Hispanic and many maintain traditional, Mexican-American lifestyles and eating habits, which makes this program ideal for them, Weaver says. This first grant is to fund a pilot project in Hatch that will graduate 80 people from the course, most of whom are stay-at-home parents or care givers. Next year, we hope to expand the program to other areas, such as Chaparral, Anthony and Sunland Park.

In most other counties, Extension reports a variety of local twists on nutrition education. In Sandoval County, for example, EFNEP classes are sometimes taught in Keres, the dominant language on many of the seven pueblos there. Extension hired a Native American from Santa Ana Pueblo-70-year-old Mary Garcia-to teach the courses.

We speak the Keres language on a number of pueblos in the county, such as Santo  Domingo, San Felipe and Santa Ana, so at times I teach the classes at those pueblos in Keres, Garcia says. At some of the other pueblos, the language is also very similar to Keres. And of course, a lot of people speak English, so if we get lost someplace in our language, we can still get along.

Diabetes education: Bernita Huckabee learns about good nutrition for people with diabetes while attending a class in Los Lunas with home economist Carolynn Wilson.

Moreover, many counties, including Sandoval, are making concerted efforts to accommodate local food preferences in their classes by introducing recipes that make traditional meals more healthy. The goal is to avoid telling course participants to stop eating Hispanic or Native American dishes and, instead, teach them modified recipes that they can test out in the classroom.

This approach is especially prevalent in Extension's new diabetes education classes, which are separate from the EFNEP program. The classes began last year in response to high rates of diabetes among the state's Hispanic and Native American populations.

New Mexico ranks seventh among all 50 states in deaths due to diabetes. Approximately 14 percent of New Mexicans age 40 or older have the disease. But Hispanics are three to five times more likely to develop diabetes than Anglos, and Native Americans are 10 to 15 times more likely, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.

In the counties where diabetes education and cooking classes are being implemented, nutrition educators and home economists are particularly innovative. In Valencia County, Extension home economist Carolynn Wilson is compiling recipes to teach local diabetics how to cook their favorite Hispanic dishes like carne adovada and chile caribe in healthier ways.

We're developing a Dining with Diabetes' cookbook that's specially designed for New Mexico, Wilson says.

But perhaps most important to the success of nutrition education is the hometown background of most Extension nutrition educators. The paraprofessionals come from the communities where they work and most have personally experienced the challenges of making ends meet with limited resources.

The educators serve as role models in their communities, Bachman says. We choose paraprofessionals who have a real affinity with people of limited resources and real empathy and understanding of the situations clients face on a daily basis. Many paraprofessionals have themselves been on public assistance, and that makes it easier for them to relate and gain people's trust.

Indeed, Geri Aragon, a 46-year-old nutrition educator in Albuquerque's South Valley, says her local background is the key that opens people's hearts and minds in the classes. Aragon has lived in the area all her life, and she taught the nutrition class that Evelyn Chavez attended last year.

I don't use high-tech words because I'm just a South Valley girl and if I use big words, I'll lose my clients, she says.

Aragon says the closeness she feels with her clients helps make the classes fun and meaningful experiences, which increases the impact on participants.

Chavez agrees. That class is something I'll never forget, and not just because it changed my diet, she says. I looked forward to it every week because it was more than just a class; it was a social experience. We all shared everything during the class, from recipes to personal experiences.