Welcome to the Better Living for Texans Page!

Better Living for Texans (BLT) is a grant funded nutrition education program through the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) and Texas Health and Human Service Commission (HHSC). The BLT program helps people make healthy meals, improve their physical fitness, save money at the grocery store, grow their own foods, and adopt better food safety habits.

BLT Extension Agent

Karen Cantu, B.S.

Office: (956) 383-1026 / Email: karen.cantu@ag.tamu.edu

Goals

Goals of the Better Living for Texans Program are to assist limited resource families in acquiring needed knowledge, skills and behaviors necessary to maximize resources, have nutritionally sound diets and improve health status and self-sufficiency. We provide research and evidence-based nutrition, health and wellness knowledge to empower individuals, families, and communities to make positive changes for healthier lives.

The 6 Program Focus Areas for BLT programs are:

Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption
Adopting healthier eating patterns
Increasing physical activity
Increasing access to fruits and vegetable through gardening programs
Adopting food resource management skills to reduce food insecurity
Improving food safety practices.

Texas Families will learn to:

Maximize the use of individual and family resources through budgeting and sound consumer decision making in buying nutritious foods. Make informed choices based on an understanding of dietary guidelines and the My Plate and plan safe, economical, nutritionally sound meals for the family.
Increase healthy prevention strategies that encourage individual and family nutritional status and well-being.
Strengthen basic skills of family food planning to enhance child nutritional status and well-being.
Increasing fruit and vegetable intake while improving access to fruits and vegetables through our gardening programs.
Promoting physical activity through our programs.