Sua Vang
Educator
Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program
Fresno County UC Cooperative Extension

Following the Vietnam War, a large number of Hmong refugees from Laos immigrated to the Central Valley. They were pulled from a simple, rural existence and settled into suburban homes and apartments, placed in American schools and subjected to American television programs, advertising and eating habits.

Sua Vang, who was 14 when her family came to the U.S., attended high school in California and later earned a vocational nursing license. However, she soon was hired by UC Cooperative Extension to teach nutrition education to Hmong refugees in Fresno County. For the past 20 years Vang has worked diligently to help the first generation adjust to American culture and encourage the second generation to maintain the Hmong's traditional healthful eating habits.

"Mostly back in Laos, the staples were rice and vegetables, with little meat," Vang said. "There wasn't always money to buy meat and they didn't live close to the market, so they didn't have access to it every day."

But in the U.S., one of the first adjustments made to the diet is including much more meat, she said. The typical Hmong diet is also short on fruit and milk. However, of greatest concern to Vang has been the Hmong families' adoption of America's soda habit while a healthful beverage Hmong families enjoyed in their homeland is falling by the wayside.

"In Laos, we drink vegetable broth. After we cook vegetables, we don't throw the broth away. We drink it warm in the winter or cold in the summer," Vang said.

Not all habits brought from home are the better. Vang is also introducing new foods to families based on the latest dietary research, which, for example, indicates that brown rice provides more nutrients and fiber than white rice.

"Hmong families eat a lot of rice. I try to get them to eat brown rice. But white rice is more gooey and tastes better," Vang said. "Right now, I'm showing them how to incorporate brown rice in recipes. They say, 'That's not bad. It tastes OK.'"

Vang said her job has many challenges. The mother of five high school- and college-aged boys, she knows personally about the wide generation gap that forms when children are raised in a completely different culture than their parents. And she has seen an alarming rise in diabetes and hypertension in the Hmong community as families embrace American eating habits.

"To do this work, I would say it would have to be someone who has a passion for it," she said. "You have to have passion. I have always been interested in working with people. That's what I like to do."