Nutritious choices made simple ®
In 1987, the National Garden Association began the tradition of honoring the horticultural world with an April week devoted to highlighting the benefits of gardening. In 2003, one week became four, and today April is National Garden Month. Throughout this early spring month, the National Garden Association shares tips and resources for growing a variety of plants.
If you live in the Northeast than Spring can’t “spring” fast enough! Even those of us who love the snow must admit that it’s time to shift to maintaining our gardens, growing our veggies and enjoying our own “garden to table” eating.
Want to really get kids excited about cooking? Invite them to participate in a junior chef competition! On March 15, 2018 the Bethel Public School district in Connecticut held their annual Future Chefs All-Star Edition cooking competition sponsored by Sodexho.
We all seek a kitchen with a good pantry. A large space where we can store our collection of canned goods and pastas of all shapes. We picture a highly organized space–our own personalized mini market. Then we live, we rush, we scramble to get meals on the table, and over time that perfect pantry is anything but. We don’t need a time of year or a date on the calendar to tell us it’s time make the best of our pantry: with simple strategies, we can do it today.
Happy National Nutrition Month! Developed by the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics to celebrate the role of nutrition and following a healthy lifestyle, NNM annually highlights the many ways food influences our lives and how that influence goes beyond what’s on our plate. This year’s NNM theme, “Go Further with Food,” is all about thinking beyond food as nourishment, which does just that.
Do you know where you’re getting salt in your diet? Sure, you may know when you go for a salty snack, but what about the times when salt sneaks in? Just as a food doesn’t have to taste sweet to contain sugar, a food doesn’t have to taste salty to be salty. It’s easy for us to consume more salt than we realize, especially as most of our sodium intake comes from packaged foods and restaurants, not from the salt shaker. It’s clear that we’re getting more salt than we realize and need strategies to minimize it.
We know that exercise is important. The far-reaching benefits include helping to maintain an ideal body weight, reducing stress, preventing injury, boosting bone health and, of course, keeping our heart (our most important muscle) strong and healthy. It’s this last benefit that most of us assume we are experiencing, but are we? Do we really know how to move for our heart?
I get it, you have big goals. You want to change your diet, change your activity level, and change your weight. You also want to change as fast as possible. It’s easy to fall into a trap of reading every article you come across, bookmarking a series of websites, and taking the “advice” of everyone in your newsfeed. Before long, your brain is full of ideas of what to change, but do you know how to foster real change and avoid common pitfalls that limit success?