CHFFF

Choose Health: Food, Fun, and Fitness

Hands-On, Interactive Healthy Eating and Active Living Lessons

NOTE: Select this link for CHFFF 2022 revised edition.

Choose Health: Food, Fun, and Fitness (CHFFF) is a 6-lesson, hands-on, evidence-based curriculum for 8-15-year-olds (3rd-8th graders) that targets behaviors shown to reduced unhealthy weight gain and chronic disease. It was developed by Cornell University’s Division of Nutritional Sciences in collaboration with Cornell Cooperative Extension’s 4-H Youth Development Program, with substantial local staff and youth participant input to ensure feasibility and ease of use. CHFFF uses experiential learning to teach healthy eating and active play. Topics include replacing sweetened drinks with low-fat milk and water, eating more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, eating fewer high-fat and high-sugar foods, and playing actively 60 minutes a day.

Each lesson includes interactive nutrition activities, food preparation, active games, a goal setting challenge, and a family newsletter. Posters, visual aids, scanned food packages, game pieces and instruction cards, and other teaching materials are all included. CHFFF supports the 2020-25 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and USDA’s MyPlate, and uses a dialogue approach for more effective retention and application of information and skills. Research-based evidence suggests that CHFFF promotes positive behavior change, with significant improvements from pre to post in vegetable and fruit consumption, sweetened drinks, reading nutrition labels, and other food and activity-related behaviors.

CHFFF is intended for use by Cooperative Extension educators and others with a background in nutrition and experience working with youth, and has been used in all 50 states, primarily in EFNEP, SNAP-Ed, and 4-H. CHFFF is in the SNAP-Ed toolkit.

See the links to the left for printing information, evidence base, training resources, Spanish CHFFF, and other supplemental materials.

CHFFF was also designed to be taught by teens in our companion program Choose Health Action Teens (CHAT), in which teens are trained to co-teach CHFFF to younger youth in after-school programs, summer camps, schools, and other settings.

For more information: contact Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University. FNEC-admin@cornell.edu