Nutritious choices made simple®
If your daily tasks include packing school lunch, you know it can get tiring to come up with ideas your kids will eat every day, while keeping it interesting, safe, and nutritious. Like any other meal you plan and prep for, school lunch must fit into a balanced day. There are a few common pitfalls many of us fall into when considering what our kids need packed in their lunch bag. Let’s avoid them together.
Whether you’re just learning to cook or are looking to expand your skills into a specific area, we’d like to help. Our cooking advice tends to focus on preparing delicious food that’s packed with nutrition. We showcase recipes that earn Guiding Stars. This means that they have more of the nutrients we should each more of and fewer of the food qualities we should limit.
Maybe you’re a creature of habit. Or maybe you just adore certain summer fruits and veggies so much that you find you’re getting the same three or four produce items each week. If you’re ignoring everything else out there, you could easily up your nutrition game by branching out in the produce aisle. And if there ever was a time to do this, it’s summertime! Here are a few ideas for how to dig yourself out of the summer produce rut…..
Bulk acquisition of produce is one of the ways we can save money while eating fresh food. We’ve discussed nutrition-oriented ways of preserving produce and tricks for experimenting with a vegetable to keep it from getting boring. Sometimes, of course, you just need to get it out of your house. Not many people appreciate it when we play “ding-dong, ditch” with a paper bag of zucchini. And, more to the point, if you find someone who would actually appreciate that zucchini, you might be able to exchange it for a food you don’t have.
Supermarket sales continue to show shoppers’ growing interest in and demand for local foods. In the Hartman Group’s Health + Wellness 2019 report, 69% of consumers say they look for locally grown or produced foods and beverages when shopping. To meet this demand, grocers are sourcing and marketing more local foods in their stores. The same Hartman report noted that consumers across the board see locally sourced foods and beverages as healthier, but is that true? In this edition of Surprising Stars, let’s explore how Guiding Stars evaluates local foods and determines if they really are a nutritious choice.
If there is a word that stirs emotion in agriculture, it’s “modified.” I try to avoid discussing plant modification unless there is plenty of time to explore the full definition and many angles from which to consider what it means. That said, it is fascinating to explore whether we can enhance the nutritional quality of some plants. Strategies to improve the nutritional status of our global population are always top of mind for me.
Was your garden planting a bit overenthusiastic in places? Do you find yourself struggling to use up one or two veggies? It happens, and I am here to help. When I’m trying to use up a vegetable I am getting tired of, I think about my opportunities for change in terms of temperature, texture, and taste.
One of the oft-claimed benefits of choosing locally-grown foods is that they are nutritionally superior to foods that have to travel a distance to reach the consumer. This seems logical, but let’s take a closer look at this idea…