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Family and Consumer Sciences

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What is Family and Consumer Science?

Family and Consumer Sciences Agents work with all ages and communities in their counties to educate and encourage healthy living. Family and Consumer Sciences Agents may present nutritional label reading workshops to working and older adults, offer cooking schools at the Extension office or area churches, or be found in the schools teaching students to form healthy habits through activities and taste tests of healthy snacks! Our goal is to help families and consumers make healthy lifestyles through interactive, hands-on nutrition education programs. Family & Consumer Sciences Agents also work in the realm of food safety education by offering Safe Plates, a Food Protection Manager Certification course, to food retail businesses. Agents also have the ability to present free food safety workshops for churches, civic groups, and other entities that serve food without the requirement of a certification.

Please contact Gwen Williams at the North Carolina Cooperative Extension, Johnston County Center at 919-989-5381 for information and feel free to check out our offerings below. 

Examples of Programs Offered by our Family & Consumer Sciences Agent:

Eat.Move.Save. is a 4-week program that focused on helping you with two specific goals- eating more fruits and vegetables and increasing your physical activity! Participants in this program also learn shopping hacks to save money while at the grocery store.

Cook Smart,Eat Smart is a 4-week program geared towards helping you make healthier choices through nutrition label reading, smart shopping, and healthy cooking methods. This program includes knife skills, cooking demos, and more!

Med Instead of Meds is our Mediterranean Diet healthy eating series. This 6-week series allows you to dive into the benefits of healthy eating and focused on one concept each week. This is our most nutrition-based program but still offers cooking demonstrations and recipes!

Meal Prep 101 is a single workshop that teaches you how to plan your meals ahead of time to save time and money. We also discuss how to select the best buy and plan based on seasonality, coupons, and store sales.

Cooking Under Pressure teaches you how to use an electric pressure cooker to get meals on the table in less time. You’ll learn basics of the device, safety measures, and how to clean and use your device. A demonstration is included.

Home Food Preservation is a stand alone series of multiple workshops you can pick and choose from to meet your needs. Throughout the Spring and Summer months, we offer workshops that teach you the basics of canning, safe methods for canning fruits and high acid foods, safe canning for canning meats and vegetables, as well as how to freeze, dry, and ferment foods safely and for the best quality.

Safe Plates for Food Handlers is a free program for churches, fundraising groups, and other organizations that do occasional cooking for large groups and want to learn how to keep people safe and prevent foodborne illness. This course does not provide any certifications to meet food regulations for food managers; this program is an extra measure to help food handlers practice food safety.

Safe Plates for Food Managers is an accredited program for those who operate or manage retail food businesses. This program is ANSI-approved and we take pride in working with the Johnston County Environmental Health team to answer your food regulation and certification questions. This is a certification course that meets Food Code regulations. Fee for this class is $125 per person.