1. I want to inspire, encourage, and assist all families in eating better, especially when it comes to their kids.
2. I believe good health is one the most important things you can give a child. You can hope, pray, and wish they will do all sorts of great things in their lives, but they won't be able to accomplish much if they aren't healthy.
3. I'm tired of my children being exposed to so many unhealthy situations, even with the education and example I provide at home.
4. I always have room for improvement myself, and this blog has encouraged me to get healthier myself and keep doing better by my kids. I certainly have to practice what I "preach"!
5. I love to write and was a journalism major in college. This has given me an outlet that I actually have time to do.
6. I can't do it alone, and I hope to drum up support for advocacy!
As always, I welcome your thoughts, opinions, and ideas! I average around 100-150 visits to the blog per day, and I truly appreciate your support!
My kids enjoying a healthy lunch yesterday while on a field trip to the zoo (turkey and low fat provolone on whole wheat bread, fresh strawberries, and pretzels). I was saddened to see what most of the other kids were eating - Lunchables, sugary "juice" boxes, potato chips, etc. A healthy lunch is really no harder or more expensive to prepare than an unhealthy one. How do we do a better job of educating parents?
just discovered your blog from your comment on Fed UP.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't understand is why every lunch should have a Sweet Treat? Those Lunchables have a little piece of candy and sometimes a juice pack too...the amount of sugar little ones take in every day is huge.
How much sugar should a child have a day? I need to look that up!
The problem isn't natural sugars like the sweet of the strawberries it is the "added" sugars we give the kids, because they fill them up and then they don't get the good stuff like calcium that their bodies need to grow.
Now off to search for a good answer to that sugar question.
I agree with you that a healthy lunch is no harder to prepare than an unhealthy one. We work really hard to give our kids healthy lunches - and we have a website full of ideas - check it out at http://www.lunchtaker.com
ReplyDeleteUsers can share their lunch ideas and let us calculate nutrition for them, create a "lunch" combo and read through our blog posts. Now, as to Viki's point - I think one of our next blog post might just be about sugar.
And sweet treats .. hmmm. I try to do a treat some days in lunch, but not all. We have a "Sundae Monday" night where we have dessert on Monday evenings. It is the only night of the week we do a dessert, and it is fun to look forward to. It doesn't mean that we don't occasionally do dessert other nights, but just that we'll definitely be having ice-cream on Monday nights. However, on Mondays I don't send a sweet treat to school and we talk about why - our bodies don't need sugar - they need fruits, veggies, proteins etc. We talk about how on the pyramid we should only have a little bit of "desserty" stuff a week and we need to spread it out. My kids, at 6 and 9, seem to get it so far at least.