Tag Archives: vegetables

Do your kids watch TV while they eat?

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Two-thirds of kids watch TV during mealtimes. On average, kids spend 53 hours a week looking at a screen (sometimes more than one at a time!).

The problem? This affects their health, today and tomorrow.

First of all, just that much screen time makes me cringe. Watching TV means kids are sedentary instead of moving their bodies. Exercise is important for people of all ages. Also, if they are watching TV they aren’t playing or socializing, both of which are needed for healthy brain and personality development.

But back to the mealtime issue. If they are watching TV, they are missing out on the family meal. Family meals are extremely important for emotional development and for kids to adopt healthy eating habits. For more on the family meal, read this post. Additionally, kids who watch TV the most have higher intakes of calories, fat, and sugar, and lower intakes of fruits and vegetables. This leads to poor brain and body development now while they need optimal nutrition. And it also is associated with obesity, Diabetes and heart disease later.

Turn the TV off and enjoy the family meal. You are your kids’ best model of how to eat healthy.

3 Tips to Transform your Health in 2015

There are many ways to improve your diet. But I think I have narrowed it down to the most important.

1. Decrease your sugar (to as low as possible)

Sugar isn’t just empty calories (tons of calories without any healthful nutrients), it’s down right dangerous.

Sugar is half fructose, half glucose. Fructose goes to your liver and glucose goes to your blood stream.
Too much fructose, and your liver gets overloaded and packs it into fat and sends it straight to your belly.
Heavy loads of glucose causes an insulin spike to be released and if there is more glucose than your body can use at that time, it also goes into your fat cells, and then you’re hungry again. Too much of that and you can not only gain weight, but become insulin resistant.
Sugar also doesn’t lead to satiety. So you can get a lot of calories and not feel full (leading to more eating and more calories)
And it is addictive. Ever heard of sugar cravings?
Sugar feeds the unhealthful bacteria and yeast in your gut
(Any one of these topics is big enough for it’s own post, forgive my brevity)

Decreasing your sugar, any amount you can, will improve your health and weight. Period.

2. Decrease your consumption of processed food.

A lot like number 1, processed food gives you a lot of bad and not a lot of good.

Processed food has a lot of sugar (see above). They add it in so you will like and buy the product.
Processed food has a lot of unhealthful fats.
Processed food has unhealthy levels of salt.
The trifecta of salt, fat and sugar is very intentional, to get you to love and overeat and re-buy the product.
Processed food is missing important nutrients.

3. Eat tons of fruits and vegetables.

Besides being whole real food, loaded with vitamins and minerals, they are the only thing that the research shows unequivocally is GOOD for you.

Here’s to a healthy 2015! Thanks for reading.

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Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Christmas Fun with Food

Another in the fun with food series in honor of the next upcoming holiday! Make these for your kids and watch the fruit and vegetables disappear.

Broccoli, tomatoes and carrots. Serve with Ranch dressing as dip!

Bananas, clementines, grapes, pomegranate, and pineapple for the star!

Check out more ideas on my Christmas pinterest board.

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Want your kids to eat veggies? Transform the veggies into FUN! Chanukah is next week, and here’s what I have made for my kids for the past two years. They eat is up like it candy.

Above: Asparagus for the candles, halved orange (or yellow or red) grape tomatoes for the flames, and a carrot base.

Celery and peanut butter with a wheat pretzel base.

Tons of other ideas, not so healthy ones too, on my Jewish Food and Fun Pinterest Board

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