Nutritional Advice

Cindy Allison is our resident nutritionist. For more information on Cindy, please Click Here.

Eat Your Colors
By Cindy Allison

Children love to color. Every restaurant knows this and has coloring activities available for their young patrons. We know that children do not eat enough fruits and vegetables each day. Lets put color and food together to help teach our children healthy eating habits! Eat your colors is a national campaign developed to help us do just that.

We know that the nutrients in our food can help us stay healthy and active as we grow older. Teaching our children about good nutrition choices as they begin to explore different foods increases their knowledge and empowers them to begin setting up the groundwork for a healthy future. Eat your colors is based on the fact that each colored fruit or vegetable has specific nutrients along with Phytochemicals and Antioxidants.

Phytochemicals are found in the distinct colors of fruits and vegetables and are believed to provide many different health benefits. The darker the color of the food, the more phytochemicals it contains. Antioxidants help the body neutralize free radicals, which are unstable oxygen molecules that left unchanged can cause damage to cells and lead to poor health.

Every meal and snack should have fruits and/or vegetables included. Get creative! Add fruit to pancake batter. Mashed banana can be added, just mix the banana with the wet ingredients before adding to the dry mix. The amount of liquid might need to be adjusted to accommodate the banana. Another fruit that works well with pancake batter is blueberries. This method puts the fruit inside the food being served and is an easy way to get fussy children to try something new. A fruit face can be added to cereal, banana slices for the eyes, and blueberries or orange slice for the mouth, maybe raisins for the nose. Sweet potatoes are an excellent choice to serve whenever you would serve white potatoes. Boiled or roasted chunks of sweet potatoes are sure to be a delicious addition to lunch! Make sure and taste these items before adding any butter, sugar or salt; remember children do not need all the seasonings that adults do.

Homemade smoothies are always fun (and tasty too). Puree vegetables and add them to soups and spaghetti sauces. Good vegetables for this include, zucchini, any cooked squash, cooked carrots, peas, onions, cooked broccoli, green beans, cooked cauliflower, and tomatoes. Just place either cooked or raw vegetables in the blender or food processor, add a little liquid if needed, puree and then add to food. Heat and serve. Even your fussy children will not know what they are eating. Make it fun! See attached activity idea or visit www.5aday.org for more great ideas

Activity idea:

Make each child a rainbow with the following colors: blue, green, white, yellow, orange, red. At one end of the rainbow hang a sample food (or foods) from that color at the other end hang a happy face that represents a prize that the child receives when he/she has eaten enough of that color food to make it across the rainbow! To mark the progress of the child, put stickers along the rainbow to show each time the child eats a serving of that color food. To encourage children to try unknown foods, give them a different sticker, one for trying the food and one for eating a whole serving of the food. This might encourage them because they have the opportunity to earn two stickers for trying new foods! Below are lists of foods per color group, fruits first, then vegetables. Have fun and remember to try some new foods along with your children!