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!

Welcome to another happy day of National Nutrition Month®! As you may remember, the theme for this month is “Nutrition: It’s a Matter of Fact“. One key point to the month is that you should follow sound advice and science when eating healthy. A great place to find good advice is MyPyramid.gov and the revised “Food Guide Pyramid”.

The MyPyramid Meal Plan is designed for healthy individuals over the age of 2 years. If you have a health condition, it is best to talk to your doctor and dietitian to find out what diet is best for you before embarking on this meal plan.

What can the MyPyramid.Gov website do for you?

1. Tell you how many calories (roughly) that you need each day.
2. Give you a meal plan that tells you how many fruits, vegetables, grains, meats/beans, and milk you need each day and provide you with information on serving sizes and examples for each food group.
3. Link you to a tracking system that you can use to type in every food item you eat in a day. Pretty cool if you ask me!
4. Give you some information on physical activity.

There is also information on the website for kids and pregnant and breastfeeding women.

So, let’s check it out!

Here are instructions for using the MyPyramid.gov website

1. Go to the MyPyramid.Gov
2. Click on the link to the right of the page for MyPyramid Plan.
3. Enter your age, sex, weight, height, and activity level (to get an estimate of how many calories you need a day). Once you do this, it will tell you, on estimate, how many calories you need each day, and how many servings of grains, fruit, vegetables, meat/beans, and milk you need each day. If you are overweight, it will kindly tell you so and it will then give you a meal plan for how to eat to lose weight.
4. For an example, click on the “tips” link to the right of the grains. You will see some examples of how to incorporate these food items into your daily meal plan. It will also give you links on the right of this page on what counts as a serving of whole grains. You can click on the tips for each of the food groups.
5. At the bottom of this page, it links you to some example of ways to incorporate physical activity into your life.
6. On the right of the page, you see links to “view, learn, and print more”. You can print out a checklist of this information (i.e., “print a PDF version of your results”).
7. On the right of the page, under the “view, learn, and print more” section, click on the My Pyramid Tracker. This will take you to a free website to enter in what you eat and see how it measures up to the guidelines. (You must register to the site, but it IS free). How awesome is that? You can also do that with your physical activity!

Well, I hope that you enjoy the MyPyramid.Gov website. It’s a useful tool for helping with weight management and control.

March is National Nutrition Month® and Building Nutrition will be posting daily on various nutrition topics. Be sure to subscribe to our RSS Feed or our email newsletters to stay up-to-date

So often, we turn to the latest “quick fix” to lose weight or get healthier. How many of us have tried a “fad diet” or a “diet pill” to help us lose weight? What about those herbal supplements that someone we know has said is the “miracle” to their health and success? Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet or quick fix to lifelong health.

This month’s theme, “Nutrition: it’s a matter of fact”, reminds us that we need to look at the facts. The MyPyramid system (formerly the Food Guide Pyramid) and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans are based on evidence. These guidelines are from “evidence-based medicine”, which means that research has been done, and this is what the research shows.

The American Dietetic Association recognizes these top 10 Nutrition Facts. These facts will be discussed here at Building Nutrition throughout the month of March:

1. Eating right doesn’t have to be complicated. Use MyPyramid.gov to develop a personalized plan for lifelong health. (stay tuned to my post tomorrow on how to use this site)
2. The best nutrition advice is based on science. Before adopting any changes to your diet, be sure the information is based in scientific fact. (see above!)
3. Get your food and nutrition facts from the expert: a registered dietitian (RD). RDs are uniquely qualified to translate the science of nutrition into reliable advice you can use every day.
4. Balancing physical activity and a healthful diet is your best recipe for managing weight and promoting overall health and fitness.
5. Think nutrient-rich rather than “good” or “bad” foods. The majority of your food choices should be packed with vitamins, minerals, fiber and other nutrients—and lower in calories.
6. Look at the big picture: No single food or meal makes or breaks a healthful diet. Your total diet is the most important focus for healthful eating.
7. Prepare, handle, and store food properly to keep you and your family safe from food-borne illness. More to come on this topic! (you can also see my previous post on food safety for information on keeping food safe in hot weather)
8. Don’t fall prey to food myths and misinformation that may harm rather than benefit your health.
9. Read food labels to get nutrition facts that help you make smart food choices quickly and easily.
10. Find the healthy fats when making food choices. By choosing polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fats, you can keep your saturated fats, trans fat, and cholesterol low.

So stay tuned this month to these topics, and feel free to subscribe to our RSS Feed or our email newsletters to stay up-to-date. Also, feel free to email me if you have any suggestions or comments. Thanks and Happy Nutrition Month!

Welcome to March!

March is National Nutrition Month®? As part of this special month, I am going to write a post every single day (yay!)! Can you believe it?

Well, what IS National Nutrition Month®? It’s a campaign to promote ACCURATE nutrition information to the public. It’s sponsored by the American Dietetic Association, which is an organization of nutrition and food professionals that is focused on promoting health and well-being. National Nutrition Month® is kind of like “Breast Cancer Awareness Month” or “Heart Health Month”; it’s a time to focus on getting your eating habits and exercise under control. So, this month, try to be more aware of your nutrition and stay tuned for more posts!

If you are into goal setting, maybe take some time today to think of a nutrition goal you’d like to accomplish before the end of the month. Also, feel free to email me with your own topic requests and I’ll see how I can work them in.

This Friday, February 1st, is Go Red for Women Day. Why, you may ask? Well, heart disease is the leading cause of death in women, and so this is the national day to celebrate and support us women. One of the reasons I particularly like supporting associations that help prevent heart disease is because there IS a history of heart disease in my family, so this cause hits home for me.

If you’re not into wearing red, think about supporting the cause in another way: schedule a check-up with your family physician, get some physical activity on Friday, eat heart healthy food for the day, shop (while supporting a good cause), volunteer…the ideas are endless!

See the American Heart Association’s website for more ideas and information!