How can you bring nutrition into the home and teach the family about the importance of nutrition?

Bring Nutrition onto the Table

• Eat breakfast each morning and make sure your kids eat a healthy breakfast too
• Make a fruit and vegetable for lunch and dinner each day
• Encourage your kids to drink milk with meals
• Encourage healthy portions

Make Meal Times Fun

• Don’t talk about “bad” stuff at the table
• Don’t argue with your significant other or with the kids
• Ask them about their day
• Have them help you with dinner preparation if they are old enough
• Plan a theme night each week for dinner and choose different cuisines (Mexican, Ethiopian, Indian, Thai, etc.)

Another thing you can do, if you have younger kids, is to have them make place mats for everyone. You could make them draw something nutritious (one person draws several fruits, another draws vegetables or a garden, etc) or have each child draw their favorite food or fruit/vegetable.

Plan Nutrition-Related Field Trips

What about a field trip? Plan a trip to the grocery store, and discover all the different fruits and vegetables out there. Have the children pick a new fruit or vegetable to try (and if you don’t know ways to prepare them, look up a good recipe online). Take them to a farm, or a farmer’s market (depending on where you are located and the time of year that it is). Take them on a factory tour of a food place!

Have Them Read

Buy a nutrition-themed book (not a diet book though) and read to your child (for young children) or have each child pick a book that has a nutrition focus and tell the family about it over dinner.

Get your children involved in reading nutrition/food labels. Have them help you plan a nutritious meal or choose the healthiest potato chips or cereal that the family likes (as an example) at the grocery store.

Spread the Word

As well, don’t feel like you have to only do these activities within your family. Ask your children’s friends, your friends, your family to get involved with your activities. Nutrition is like a smile–it’s contagious, and the more people who get involved, the better!

That’s right! Today is the first annual Registered Dietitian Day, so if you see your friendly dietitian today, wish him or her a happy day! And no, I didn’t make this day up.

On this day, think of taking care of your nutritional health and schedule an appointment with a registered dietitian. Many times, we schedule check-ups to make sure that our cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose is within normal range, our “female” or “male” parts are working normally, and that our teeth are shiny and clean. But how many of us schedule check-ups to make sure that our diets are healthy and will lead us to lifelong health and wellness? Probably not many of us!

Today, why not schedule your diet check-up with a registered dietitian (RD)? Some insurance companies now cover your visit to a dietitian, or you may be able to pay using your “flex spending” account.

So, why schedule a check-up with an RD?

The following points taken from the American Dietetic Association website

1. You have cardiovascular disease (like high cholesterol), high blood pressure, or diabetes.
2. You are thinking of getting or have had gastric bypass surgery. This changes the amount of food you can safely eat at a time, and you may be missing important nutrients from your diet.
3. You have digestive problems like Crohn’s disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, gastric reflux, ulcerative colitis, irregular bowel movements, etc. An RD can help you avoid trigger foods that may exacerbate your symptoms.
4. You are pregnant or are trying to get pregnant. It will be important for you to take a multivitamin and eat foods high in folate.
5. You need guidance and confidence in breastfeeding your baby and want to know the best diet for you and the best feeding guidelines for your baby. Calcium, iron, vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, and fluids become an important part of your diet when you are breastfeeding.
6. You, your teenager, or your child has issues with food and healthy eating. An RD is helpful if you think you or your child has an eating disorder like anorexia nervosa, bulimia, or binge eating disorder.
7. You or your child want or need to lose or gain weight.
8. You are caring for an aging parent. Your parent may not be getting the nutrients he/she needs, the amount of medicines that he/she is taking may interact with some foods, and your parent may not be getting the fluids he/she needs.
9. You want to eat smarter. You want to know if the latest diet is healthy, if what you hear in the media about a food or nutrient is really true, etc.
10. You want to improve your performance in sports. If you are an athlete or if you work out regularly, you may want to talk with an RD to find out how you can optimize that workout!

Whatever your reason, take some time today to look up a registered dietitian in your area and schedule that appointment! And don’t forget to schedule one for your child and your elderly parent as well. Just as physicians specialize in different areas, so do RDs. So the RD that you see for your diet may not be the same person to counsel you on your child’s diet or your parent’s diet.

This week, March 3-7, is National School Breakfast Week and is sponsored by the School Nutrition Association. The purpose of National School Breakfast Week is to raise awareness of the healthfulness of school breakfast and the importance of breakfast in general. This year’s theme is “School Breakfast: Fuel Your Imagination“.

Fuel Your Imagination

What a fun slogan! By fueling your body, you can fuel your imagination! Kids who eat breakfast have been shown to do better on tests (especially in math and reading) and improve their speed and memory in cognitive tests. If you have kids (or if you’re a kid at heart), you should check out the School Breakfast website. On the site, you can take some “cosmic quizzes” and learn about breakfast. Did you know that 49% of Americans start their day off with a bowl of cereal? I’m one of those people!

Many of us may think that school food isn’t healthy, which is actually not true. School breakfast actually provides (and is required by the government to provide) 25% of the recommended daily allowances for calories, protein, vitamins A and C, calcium, and iron. Schools are required to keep the total fat of the meal to less than 30% of calories and saturated fat to less than 10% of calories.

Some school breakfasts that your child’s school may be providing this week are (all come with milk):

• Monday: Molten Space Cereal (oatmeal) with asteroids (raisins) and space dust (brown sugar)
• Tuesday: Blast-off Burrito (breakfast burrito with corn, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and salsa) with Rocket Wedges (potato wedges)
• Wednesday: Pluto Pancakes (in memory of the “planet-no-more” I bet) and Saturn Sausages (turkey sausage)
• Thursday: Galaxy of Grub (cold cereal and an apple with peanut butter or critter munch–animal crackers, cheeries, goldfish, and peanuts)
• Friday: Faraway French Toast with Space Syrup (french toast, syrup, yogurt, and grapes)

Some important information about the School Breakfast Program:
Last year, about 9.9 million children in more than 84,500 schools and institutions participated in the School Breakfast Program (which is about a 6% increase from the previous year). If your child’s school participates in the School Breakfast Program, your child is eligible to buy breakfast at school. You will need to fill out an application to determine eligibility for free or reduced-cost breakfasts. And, in case you’re wondering, your child’s school does get reimbursed some for participating in the Program.

Who may benefit from the School Breakfast Program

1. Kids who aren’t hungry when he/she wakes up in the morning
2. Kids who do not typically have time to eat in the morning before school
3. Kids whose families are having a hard time providing meals for them

If your school provides breakfast and your child typically eats it, ask them this week if they are having any of the fun foods listed above. If your school doesn’t provide or if your child eats breakfast at home, consider making the above foods in honor of this week. Whatever the case, enjoy your breakfast this week!! Remember to model behavior for your child! A child who sees a parent or teacher eat a healthy breakfast will more than likely want to do the same, so lead by example!