Growing Healthy Kids goes to Imagine Schools at South Vero

Boy, was today fun! First, we had a TON of liquid sunshine drop in for a visit. For you northerners, that is Florida-speak for RAIN.

Then, this afternoon the awesome kids from Indian River Charter High School's Kiwanis Key Club who are participating in the Growing Healthy Kids' service leadership project presented a most excellent program for the children at Imagine Schools at South Vero (www.myimagineschools-verobeach.com). We had the kids eating salad, making vinaigrette dressings, and jumping up and down with joy. WHAT FUN!


Let me tell you a story about one little girl at this afternoon's event. She was 30-35 pounds overweight. At the beginning of the party she said to me rather defiantly, "I'm not eating that." During the course of the project, she changed her mind and tried the salad at the gentle urging of the 2 high school girls working with her. Next time I stopped by her table, she was wearing a GIANT SMILE while eating a bowl of Kevin's greens with the balsamic dressing she helped to make.

The point is that kids CAN change their attitudes AND their eating habits, when we let them. That one little girl can now teach others.

First of all, thank you to all the children at Imagine School-YOU'RE AWESOME! Thanks to Liz Santiago, Kiwanis Key Club sponsor, for helping put it all together. A big thank you for all the kids from the charter high school - YOU ROCK!! Thanks to Jonathan Sternberg, principal at Imagine Schools, for allowing the high school kids to teach your children fun, creative ways to eat healthy and be active. Thanks to Kevin O'Dare of Osceola Organics for donating the beautiful spring mix of fresh, locally grown greens - THE KIDS LOVED THEM!

Growing Healthy Kids is a movement which, beginning in Indian River County, Florida, is reversing childhood obesity through knowledge, skills, and practice of healthy habits. Growing Healthy Kids, Inc. teaches kids and adults how to eat healthier and get moving. We can and will reverse childhood obesity in America because FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION.

In gratitude,
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids

www.GrowingHealthyKids.blogspot.com
www.GrowingHealthyKids.me

To learn more how you can support our 2011 education projects, go to www.RedCarpetCompetition.com and click on "Vero Beach".

Growing Healthy Kids Partnership with Cindy Ashton Helps Kids Live Their Dreams NOW

It just keeps getting better! With your help, Growing Healthy Kids is teaching kids and their families how to eat healthier and move more so they get to (and stay at) healthy weights. This is part of the Growing Healthy Kids' strategy for reversing childhood obesity in America. Growing Healthy Kids' incredibly talented friend, Cindy Ashton, has partnered with us as one of the 6 charities she is highlighting on her 2011 Red Carpet Dreaming Tour! How cool is that! With Cindy's support and help, all kinds of people across America and Canada will learn from Growing Healthy Kids about how children need access to healthy foods and simple ways to eat smarter.

Here's what you need to know now if you are concerned about children's health issues. www.RedCarpetCompetition.com.

Tell everyone you know who loves to sing, who is under 25 years old, and who lives within a 100 mile radius of Vero Beach (that includes Orlando, Lake Wales, Port St. Lucie, West Palm Beach, Melbourne, Okeechobee, and Fort Lauderdale). Send them this message: ENTER THE COMPETITION!!! Join us when Cindy is in Vero Beach this June to help us teach the United States and Canada (let's get real, the whole WORLD, thanks to high calorie fast food establishments like McDonald's and Burger King) that it is not OK for children to be eating a bazillion more calories a day than they need to be healthy.

GOT IT??? Check it out...www.RedCarpetCompetition.com.

Together, we are teaching kids and adults how to reverse childhood obesity. Because failure is not an option...

The Growing Healthy Kids movement is reversing childhood obesity, one child and one garden at a time.

To your perfect health,

Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids

wwww.GrowingHealthyKids.me

Balsamic Vinaigrette will Spring You Into Health!

One way to improve the health of America's children and reverse the childhood obesity epidemic which is already bringing older adult diseases like type 2 diabetes into many children's world is to teach the adults.

At THE GIANT SALAD PARTIES (TM) developed by Growing Healthy Kids, Inc. we teach kids -- of all ages -- how to eat smarter and healthier. The key thing is we ALWAYS make it fun! Here is one of the recipes we are currently featuring at Growing Healthy Kids' educational events in Indian River County, Florida. Please DO try this at home with your own kids.

MIX together:
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 Tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
sea salt
freshly ground pepper

WHISK IN: 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

SERVE with a salad of locally grown vegetables like the ones I use that Nat Rew and Rebecca and Mark Hornbuckle are growing at Veggies of Vero (www.veggiesofvero.com).

Are you and your kids ready to learn more about healthy eating?? Then JOIN ME at The Club at Vero on Saturday, March 26 from 2 to 5 PM for SPRING INTO SPRING, an expo and business networking event. Michael Gifford (he's the one in the picture giving me a FABULOUS chair massage at the Growing Healthy Kids Variety Store) will be giving complementary chair massages and I will be teaching how you can easily and economically SPRING INTO HEALTH using recipes such as the Balsamic Vinagrette recipe above.

For information on vendor tables, call Barbara Petrillo at 772-205-7133 or email her at barb4jewels@yahoo.com.

Growing Healthy Kids is a movement to improve the health - and lives - of America's chldren, one child and one garden at a time. Because failure to halt, reverse, and prevent childhood obesity is not an option.

To your perfect health,
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids

photo credit: Ella Chabot, Get Shot by Ella