For this national Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day, I've collected some of my favorite recipes (pie and non-pie alike) in case you feel like joining me in practicing moderation after dinner tonight. For me, teaching my kids about moderation while eating sometimes looks like giving everyone a serving and then me having another after the kids are tucked quietly in bed :).
By all accounts, there is an abundance of food in America. Rates of obesity are high, across all segments of the population, and Americans have access to and consume more calories than are recommended for good health. Yet hunger is rampant with as much as 15% of American households considered food insecure, which means they lack access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all members of their household.
Over the past several decades, childhood obesity rates have risen dramatically, especially in economically disadvantaged communities. Children who carry excess weight face a number of health problems in childhood, and later as adults.
A number of factors have contributed to this health crisis, and it's going to take a number of approaches and lifestyle changes to help reverse the trend. Some of them require commitments from industry and politicians. But not all of them. Some of them require YOU.
As we move headfirst into spring it seems the appropriate time to talk about one of my other long-term food goals that I have for my family: that they know where their food comes from. I don’t mean that they need to know where every cucumber and apple are grown and to have been able to shake the hand of the person that grew them, but I do want them to know that cucumbers grow on vines and apples on trees.
As my kids have grown they have gone from willingly putting anything in their mouths (including crayons!) to being slightly more choosy, and I’ve watched even my most adventurous eater stop eating foods she once liked. Given that I also know that kids need multiple exposures to a food before they “like” it (or even willingly eat it), and that this number increases as children get older, I wanted to have strategies in place to promote + support the skill of tasting.
What you feed your baby when she starts eating solid foods matters, and new research out of the UK sheds more light on just how much it does. Following children over 8 years enrolled in The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, researchers at the Centre for Child and Adolescent Health at the University of Bristol identified a number of different dietary patterns at 6 and 15 months of age and examined their link with weight and IQ 8 years later.
Nationally, approximately 24% of pre-school aged children are overweight or obese, meaning that they carry excess fat for their height. Overweight children have a two- to tenfold increase in the likelihood that they will also be overweight as adults. Through group well-baby visits, one group in the South Bronx is hoping to set kids on healthy trajectories early in life by focusing more broadly on the foundations of healthy early childhood development.
I am a list maker: To Do lists, Remember lists, Birthday Gift lists, Project Ideas lists, Must Read lists. They all find their way to my trusty pad of yellow-lined paper. I recently simplified my shopping list in the hopes that it would save me time and money. Let me show you how.
One thing I have learned over the last seven years as a parent, informed by the previous decade as nutrition researcher and professor, is that knowing WHAT I needed to feed my kids to support and promote their health is not enough.