Government

Health and Nutrition

Resources

Federal, state, and local governments provide free, online access to many information resources. The links below will connect you to useful government information on a variety of health- and nutrition-related topics. The links are categorized, and each is followed by a brief description of its focus. Explore them all!

The Best of All
General Health and Nutrition Information
Food Safety Information
Women's Health Information
Children's Health Information

U.S. Food and Drug Administration This high-quality Web site includes health and nutritional information ranging from animal drugs to cosmetics. Viewable in nine different languages, the USDA site also includes numerous links and valuable agency contact information.

Healthfinder Healthfinder contains many links neatly categorized to simplify finding the subject area you need. The information here includes government health-related news and advice on making health-related decisions.There is also a search tool for searching the site and a Spanish-language viewing option.

5-A-Day Online Tracking Chart "What does it take to be healthy?" this site asks. And it also provides all the answers, based on the National Cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's guidelines for eating at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Here you can take a quiz, read recipes, and print a chart for tracking your fruit and veggie intake.

Consumer Protection: Diet, Health & Fitness The Federal Trade Commission has linked to its homepage full-text articles on a variety of health- and nutrition-related topics, from indoor tanning to testing your exercise IQ--all in the spirit of protecting the public consumer.

The Food Guide Pyramid Described as the "interactive food pyramid," this site showcases a clickable food pyramid that offers definitions of serving sizes, serving size examples, suggestions for making your servings healthier, and much more.

Nutrient Data Laboratory Search the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Database for Standard Reference. Enter a keyword describing a food item, and receive complete and detailed nutritional information about it, from vitamins, to minerals, to a breakdown of lipids. You can also search a glossary of terms and get answers to frequently asked questions.

Index of Food and Nutrition Internet Resources Compiled by the Food and Nutrition Information Center, this site is an alphabetical listing of government, commercial, organization, and education links to other sites that all contain food and nutrition information.

Food and Nutrition Information Center The Food and Nutrition Information Center is one of the information centers making up the National Agricultural Library. Most notably, this site contains links to other Food and Nutrition Information databases--and there are many.

Population, Health and Nutrition Center A division of the U. S. Agency for International Development. This site contains international health and nutrition information, facts, news, and statistics.

Health Information This site is a link from the National Institues of Health (NIH) home page. Here you can use the NIH Health Information Index to help you find the NIH Institute that supports research related to your health concern.

Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center Devoted to "better health and well-being through optimal mineral nutrition," the Grand Forks, North Dakota nutrition research center provides links to other nutrition research centers throughout the country, as well as to related nutrition sites.

Office of Dietary Supplements A division of the National Institutes of Health. This site contains a question index and a bank of information with general to broad definitions and explanations of dietary supplements.

Nutrition and Your Health Contained within this site are American dietary guidelines. The documentation from both 1990 and 1995 are available in PDF, so Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view them (which you can download at this site). You also can read the documentation outlining recommended daily allowances of vitamins, minerals, and other nutritional values.

Health Resources and Services Administration The Health Resources and Services Adminstration is part of the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Public Health Service. This site describes the HRSA and provides an organization chart with links to each HRSA office's Web site. There is also a link to HRSA's Focus on Childhealth pages.

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine This site offers information about non-standard medical practices for medical practitioners and the public. It includes research on such practices as massage therapy and acupuncture.

Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Here you can view frequently asked questions on food safety, search the site, read about the National Food Safety Initiative, and find out many other facts concerning what you eat.

Food Safety Briefing Room The most useful aspect of the Food Safety Briefing Room is the collection of published reports in PDF on different aspects of food safety. Here you also can read about illness related to foodborne pathogens, the health risks associated with unsafe food, and food safety policies.

USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service Here you can find out what the government is doing to maintain and improve food safety. Full-text PDF copies of the newsletter "The Food Safety Educator" are here, as well as information on the Food Safety Virtual University, an on-line food safety classroom.

Information for Women on Food Safety, Nutrition and Cosmetics This site offers access to resources--mainly in the form of articles--on a variety of women's health issues, from eating disorders to cancer. It also has searching capabilities.

The National Women's Health Information Center This site is a project of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is an amazing clearinghouse of information with searching capabilities, a toll-free 800 number, dictionaries, a frequently asked questions panel, and a Spanish-language version.

Women's Health The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has put together an extremely useful collection of women's health information indexed by topic. The information is in the form of reports and tables viewable in PDF.

Gaining and Growing: Assuring Nutritional Care of Preterm Infants This site targets the parents and caregivers of premature infants and focuses on proper feeding and nutrition to promote weight gain. Gaining and Growing is funded by the Maternal Child Health Care Bureau, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Food Guide Pyramid Quiz for Preschool Nutrition Especially for the children's caregivers! Find out how much you know about what two-to-four-year-olds should eat. This site is a production of the Virginia Cooperative Extension, made up of state and local governments, the University of Virginia, and Virginia Tech.

Hazardous Waste Sites and Children's Health Risks Anyone who lives near hazardous waste is exposed to health risks, but children are especially vulnerable. This page provides information about children exposed to hazardous waste.

Homeade Baby Food This site is another production of the Virginia Cooperative Extension that covers baby dietary guidelines and how to make your own nutritious baby food.

Children's Health Protection This site is part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It promotes protecting children from environmental threats, it and includes links to more than fifty children's environmental health organizations.

E-Mail Jennifer Link

USC CLIS 734, October 1999