Nutritious choices made simple®
If your kids are like most kids, getting them to eat vegetables isn’t quite as easy as getting them to eat candy. Can you imagine offering them vegetables as a reward for finishing their chore list for the week? Have they ever said, “Would you please, please, PLEASE let me bring vegetables to the class Halloween party?” Not the most likely scenario, right?
Congratulations to Katie of Winthrop, Maine for winning the random drawing for our Back-to-School Snacks Sweepstakes! Even if you missed the contest, you can still get great ideas and advice from our Consulting Dietitian, Allison Stowell, and Expert Chef, Erin Dow on our Snacks page.
Thanks to everyone who participated and offered their great snack ideas! Here are a few of our favorites:
These simple substitutes offer more nutrition while still letting your children eat and enjoy their favorite foods. In many cases you are changing from a less healthful option to a Guiding Stars-rated choice. In other cases, both options are good for you but, one just offers a bit more.
Complete this fun snack with some equally engaging trail mixes. I suggest providing small bowls of each option (and encouraging some snacking along the way as well). I selected the (mostly Guiding Star-earning) ingredients below, which provide a mix of good fat, fiber, fruit and a bit of protein, so that the trail mix will not only be fun to make, but nutritionally balanced too.
At our schools, the lunch schedule for the various grades is based on several important considerations, but the time at which the kids actually NEED lunch doesn’t seem to be one of them. As regular visitors to this blog know, I am trying mightily to change the food served at school lunch, but changing the schedule is a front on which I have chosen not to fight. Instead, I have an easy system for sending the kids to school with snacks that will fairly healthfully tide them over to the next meal, whenever it may be.
On May 3rd, I packed up my car and headed from Boston to Maine. Summer vacation, here I come! That seems like just yesterday. I had so many big plans for my long summer weekends with friends and family. I was going to go skydiving with my brother, white water rafting with my cousins and to Nashville with my friends to find ourselves some southern gentlemen to take home to Mommy (that’s normal, right?). Now, it’s the first week in August? You have got to be kidding me. Have I done anything I actually planned to do this summer?
Mmm, delicious, juicy…yes, I will take another and another and another.
What am I talking about? Berries. Freshly picked strawberries, blueberries, blackberries or raspberries. Growing up in Maine gives you all of these pleasures, and you don’t have to go very far to find them. My dear mother (an avid canning queen) always took me and my two sisters berry picking, no matter the berry in season–we picked what was available and abundant.
Oh June…an emotional month of gearing up for summer while saying goodbye to another school year and all of its chaos. If you have school age children, you probably see June as another symbol–another mark on their growth chart. It is both thrilling and a little sad to see them grow.
Along with the many end-of-year emotions comes the never ending series of activities, parties and attempts to dodge the ice cream truck at the park. Before you know it, every day is filled with one “sometimes” food after another. Add to it the pressure of not wanting to be the parent that continually brings unhealthful foods to parties (try being the “dietitian mom”!).