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Food Stamp Nutrition Education (FSNE) is administered by USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) as part of the Food Stamp Program. FSNE activities focus on improving the likelihood that food stamp participants will make healthy food choices within a limited budget and choose active lifestyles consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the Food Guide Pyramid. FNS began providing funding for FSNE in the early 1990s, as the Food Stamp Program increasingly emphasized dietary quality and encouraged States to educate program participants about healthy food choices. FNS matches the dollars a State spends on its FSNE activities.
 State agency commitment to nutrition education has grown rapidly in recent years. In 1992, the first year of FSNE funding, seven States had nutrition education plans approved by FNS, with total Federal funding of $661,076. In fiscal 2005, all States had approved FSNE budgets. Federal dollars totaled about $225 million, which covered half of the total amount that States spent on FSNE in 2005. See more State-level data on FSNE funding and FSP participation.
ERS complements other Federal organizations that provide nutrition support by addressing research issues surrounding food assistance and nutrition programs. These include reviews of current nutrition education activities, impacts of various outreach techniques, and relationships between food assistance programs and other human services provided by the government or private sector. In support of FSNE research, reporting, and evaluation, this page provides research tools, reports of recent FSNE research activities, and links to other FSNE resources.
Research Tools
FSNE Maps and Data—Get State-level information on Food Stamp Program participation numbers, Federal FSNE funding, and Federal FSNE funding per participant from 1992 to the latest available.
Community Food Security Assessment Toolkit—Provides community-based nonprofit organizations and business groups, local government officials, private citizens, and community planners with detailed instructions on how to conduct food security assessments.
Food Stamp Program Map Machine—An interactive web-based mapping utility that illustrates program participation and benefit levels down to the county level.
State Fact Sheets—Get State- and national-level statistics on population, employment, income, and poverty.
Profiles of America—Get sociodemographic data through a map-based interface
American FactFinder—Use this Census Bureau source for population, housing, economic, and geographic data from Census 2000, the 1990 Decennial Census, the 1997 and 2002 Economic Censuses, the American Community Survey, and the Population Estimates Program.
American Community Survey—Provides accurate and up-to-date profiles from the Census Bureau of America's communities. Get timely economic, social, and housing indicators for communities and population subgroups.
Recent Activities
Developing Common Core Survey Questions to Assess Key Dietary Behavioral Outcomes of FSNE: Launching the Research Process—Participants at this April 2004 workshop hosted by ERS chose potential survey questions from a Prototype Notebook of questions selected from nutrition education literature to use in assessing FSNE. Speakers focused on practical applications of evaluation and validation of dietary behavioral outcomes of FSNE. An agenda of the workshop is available.
FSNE Workshop and Conference Proceedings—Provides links to the proceedings from the April 2004 National FSNE Conference, and two workshops held in 2003. The workshops, Priorities and Planning Workshop: Future FSNEP Research and Evaluation Activities, held in January 2003, and Advancing the Practice of Food Stamp Nutrition Education Evaluation: Art and Science, held in July 2003, addressed the growing interest in the impact of nutrition education on low-income audiences. A planning committee that included the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), ERS, FNS, networked FSNE States, and the Society for Nutrition Education focused on practical research design considerations, the development of information and reporting systems to support research and evaluation, strategies for improving collaborative research, and defining process and outcome measures.
See Also
Prototype Notebook: Short Questions on Dietary Intake, Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors—Assessing the impact of Food Stamp Nutrition Education (FSNE) on the dietary behavior of Food Stamp Program participants is a complex task. Because dietary quality is multifaceted, researchers are challenged to develop measures that assess targeted behaviors, and are suitable for use with program participants. This report provides a compendium of 128 survey questions used in previous research to assess dietary knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors for low-income populations over the age of 18. Each question is presented using a common template including the citations, data sources, data characteristics, and availability of comparable data.
White Papers on Food Stamp Nutrition Education (FSNE) Evaluation—ERS and the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) sponsored this set of papers to support evaluation of nutrition education provided through FSNE activities. Published in the Journal of Nutrition Education, the papers identify tools to assess nutrition education needs of low-income families and evaluate outcomes of nutrition education programs directed toward this audience.
Food Security in the United States: Condition and Trends—Describes recent trends in food insecurity and hunger as stratified by household type. It also depicts the geographic distribution of food insecurity across all 50 States and the District of Columbia.
Food Security in the United States: Household Survey Tools—Offer guidance to researchers seeking to assess household or individual food security, food insecurity, and hunger. Links to appropriate survey modules and assessment guides are available.
Food and Nutrition Service—Provides current information on nutrition education in the Food Stamp Program.
Food Stamp Nutrition Connection—A resource system for Food Stamp Program nutrition education providers. Educators nationwide can use this site to find the tools and information they need to provide quality nutrition education for low-income audiences.
Food Stamp Nutrition Education National Web Site—This CSREES site provides State-level information and contacts on FSNE activities.
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