EDITOR’S NOTE: In honour of Nutrition Month, Manitoulin’s Family Health Team dietitians will be penning a series of columns highlighting the work they do to keep us healthy.
Hi, I’m Nola Thompson, your Family Health Team Registered Dietitian. You can find myself and a number of other dietitians working in communities all across this beautiful island. Did you know that March is Nutrition Month? It’s a time to discover food and its impact on health. As Registered Dietitians we love food! And we love how food can promote our overall health. As a dietitian working in your community I’m so excited to be part of Dietitians of Canada Nutrition Month 2019. The campaign includes fun events, informative handouts and delicious recipes! To find those recipes please visit www.cookspiration.com. We celebrate Nutrition Month by helping Canadians unlock the potential of food.
Food has the potential to:
• Fuel: Stay energized by planning nutritious snacks into your day.
• Help us discover: Foster healthy eating habits in children by teaching them to shop and cook.
• Prevent: Understand how food can help prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
• Heal: Learn how food can promote healing and how dietitians work in Health Care Teams to make a difference.
• Bring us together: Enjoy the benefits of bringing families and friends together with food.
To make Nutrition Month come alive, I’m focusing on the potential of food to help us discover and bring us together! Food has incredible potential to help kids discover a healthy lifestyle early on. Something as simple as involving your kids in grocery shopping and cooking healthy meals can set them up for a lifetime of healthy eating and can bring you together as a family.
One of my favourite parts of my job is leading kids’ cooking classes. It’s encouraging to help kids discover new skills and new foods. We’ve tried everything from homemade meatballs to black bean quesadillas in previous classes. This Nutrition Month I’ll be hosting another March Break kids cooking class (ages 8-12) at the Family Health Team in Mindemoya on March 14. For more details or to register call 705-377-5371. We’re going to explore food’s potential to fuel our activities by preparing some healthy and delicious snacks together. These events also bring families together over food. It’s always exciting to watch as parents, grandparents, or aunts and uncles learn and try new recipes side by side with their kids, grandkids or nieces and nephews. And of course, the best part of the day is always when we get to try our tasty creations!
Can’t make it to the classes but want to try cooking with the kids in your family? Try the following steps: Pick a recipe and shop together: It helps if kids making something they love; incorporate learning: measuring ingredients is a great opportunity to review math skills and reading recipes can strengthen language skills; keep it fun: you could keep things really interesting by having a theme night – maybe your kitchen will become a Mexican fiesta with some awesome guacamole or maybe you’ll be transported to the Mediterranean as you whip up some tzatziki; be a role model:i you’re excited, they will be too. Try a new food, describe the flavour and be adventurous to inspire your kids to do the same; be cool about the mess: spills and accidental messes happen. It’s important to remain calm. You know what they say – “there’s no use crying over spilled milk!”
I hope you and your family have a great time exploring the potential of food to bring us together and help us discover a healthy lifestyle in Nutrition Month 2019!
For more information about Nutrition Month visit nutritionmonth2019.ca.
