Improving Children's Health with Fabulous Florida Fruit Shakes

Paradise greetings,
This is spring break week for kids in Indian River County. My son leaves tomorrow for New York City to make his Carnegie Hall debut with the Vero Beach High School band. How AWESOME is that? I am very proud of all the kids in the band.

Last week Growing Healthy Kids taught kids at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Indian River County how to make Fabulous Florida Fruit Shakes and another Seal of Approval was received for this tasty recipe. The kids joyfully passed out samples to staff members in between running to the teaching garden to check on our mustard greens, carrots, peas, beans, and tomatoes. Everything is growing!

Eating fruit every day is important for great health. Blueberries and strawberries are two of the world's healthiest fruits. They are very nutritious and taste great. Blueberries are low in calories (40 per 1/2 cup) and are powerful disease fighters (which is one reason why I eat a cup of blueberries every day). Strawberries are the most popular berry in the U.S. They are very low in calories (20 per 1/2 cup) and are rich in antioxidants, heart-healthy nutrients, and vitamin C.

Flaxseeds are the most concentrated plant source of omega-3 fatty acids and contain anti-inflammatory properties. Flaxseeds are a very good source of dietary fiber (the lack of fiber is a big reason why kids and adults eat too much!) and contain both insoluble and soluable fiber. The fiber in flaxseeds has a cholesterol-lowering effect. Only use GROUND flax seeds - 2 tablespoons a day - use on yogurt, cereal, salads.

Ready for the recipe that received the Growing Healthy Kids' Seal of Approval last week? Put in a blender: 1 cup fat-free milk, 1 cup frozen blueberries, 1 frozen banana, 5 Florida strawberries, and 1 Tablespoon ground flax seeds. This is enough to feed several kids and have them asking for more! Thank you, Publix Supermarkets, for providing the ingredients for this recipe.

Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health - and lives - of kids, one garden and one child at a time.

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

An Apple a Day...

Paradise Greetings,

Last week I gave a guest lecture for future nurses at Indian River State College. I had been asked to inspire them to be powerful patient educators. My goal was to inspire them to be transformational leaders of health instead of disease.
I taught them how to read a food label. I taught them how to choose foods without added fats, sugars, and salt. I taught them how to choose foods with fiber instead of foods and drinks with no fiber. What surprised me what how many of these nursing students were overweight and obese. I asked each student to calculate their own Body Mass Index, write it down, and hand it in. Yikes!
What's your body mass index (BMI)? Two out of three adults is overweight or obese. No wonder one in three kids in America are overweight or obese. Go to www.cdc.gov for a BMI calculator.
Make one simple change a week to improve your health so you can be a transformational leader. Eat an apple instead of having apple juice. The apple has dietary fiber, juice has none. Fiber is what fills us up. Fiber doesn't raise our blood sugar. After all, you know the saying, "An apple a day..."
Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health - and lives - of America's children, one garden and one child at a time.
To your perfect health.
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids

Planting Seeds for Growing Healthy Kids

Paradise Greetings,

Notice anything unusual about this photo? The kids are 100% engaged in planting seeds in the teaching gardens at the Boys and Girls Club - and getting some extra physical fitness added into their day without ANY protest! I just love teaching the kids how easy it is to eat smarter and move more!! This photo was taken yesterday during my regular weekly Growing Healthy Kids program. Some of the seeds we planted a month ago didn't make it because of the unusually cold weather we're having (coldest winter since 1958) so it was time to plant again. After all, according to our friend, Spencer Porteous, plants need sun, water, and love to grow!

Radishes, lettuce and green peppers are coming up now. We have another head of cauliflower about ready for harvest, so more "mashed cotatoes" next week! Despite our extreme weather the past couple of months, the green peppers we planted on October 13 are still alive and producing new peppers. The boys were absolutely intrigued using my camera to get close up pictures of the tiny peppers. I loved it when one of the kids said to me, "We need to plant more marigolds." And so we will...

All the kids went home with a packet of seeds compliments of the cancer prevention program at Florida Department of Health with instructions to sow them this weekend. Each child also received their own garden tool to use at home. You would have thought it was Christmas!
Growing Healthy Kids-improving the health of America's children, one garden and one child at a time.

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

Teach a Child to Grow

Paradise Greetings,

What do YOU think about all the added sugars, fats, and salt in the lunches our children eat at school? I think it's time to improve the quality of food served to our most important resource - the next generation. Improving the nutritional quality - and access to locally grown foods - are 2 of the 4 points in The First Lady's new childhood obesity campaign.

I think it's time for a food revolution. Let's have a Salad Party and get the greens and the good stuff from our local farmers. Let me know if you want to help. When you eat more of the good stuff, you eat less of the bad stuff. Keeping it simple.

It's like last Friday at one of my weekly Growing Healthy Kids program for kids served by the Boys and Girls Club, something magical happened. A couple of parents were picking up their children and said to me, "Is that my son eating VEGETABLES???" When you give kids a healthy choice, they choose health!!

Today's picture is from last Friday at one of the teaching gardens. Peas. Green beans. YES, YES!

Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health - and lives - of America's children, one garden and one child at a time.

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

Jumping Jacks & Green Beans

Paradise greetings,

What, you may ask, do jumping jacks and green beans have in common? Ecofest, that's what! Today's Growing Healthy Kids' adventure was being part of Ecofest this afternoon at a very special place in northern Indian River County, the Environmental Learning Center. Five volunteers and I greeted hundreds of children and their families who wanted to take home a plant (green beans & radishes). To "qualify" to make a seed pot, the kids were asked to do 10 jumping jacks.

We got the place hopping alright. Kids were jumping, then they played in the dirt. While the kids were busy, I talked with lots of parents and grandparents about Growing Healthy Kids' tips for making small changes for improved health. One of the simple tips I shared was to replace fruit juice with fruit. Parents, remember the saying, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away"? Know why? Fruit contains fiber, which is what fills us up. It takes a lot of apples to make 8 ounces of apple juice. Did you know 1 cup of apple juice contains 7 teaspoons of sugar and NO FIBER (CLUE: fiber=good stuff we need and we don't get from drive-through dinners (you know, places like the one with yellow arches and a clown with red hair) or the "enriched" wheat breads most people eat. The high amounts of sugar in sweet tea, sodas, fruit juices, and white breads are the problem. Diet sodas aren't the answer. I saw a lot of moms this afternoon drinking diet sodas. When I told them that new studies indicate that people OVEREAT when they drink diet sodas because their brains don't get the signal that food is on its way and they're full, they were like, "REALLY?" I'm optimistic that there are a couple more families looking at the nutrition facts label on the bread they have at home tonight looking to see how many grams of dietary fiber it has. (CLUE: We need 14 grams/1000 calories we eat.)

Here's my suggestion for healthy snacks with apples: apple slices with Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter, apple slices with a couple of walnut halves, or apple slices with a couple of slices of cheddar cheese.
Try it! Choose health. Stay tuned and remember: fruit, not fruit juice. Got it? Good.

Growing Healthy Kids, one garden and one child at a time. What fun!!

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

Sugar Will Kill You, Rainbows Will Heal You

Paradise greetings,

Tonight at 6 PM is our first Growing Healthy Kids...and Families Workshop at The Majestic Theater in Vero Beach. You know by now that Growing Healthy Kids is all about changing the landscape so that we no longer turn a blind eye to the children all around us who are not at healthy weights and teaching new skills to kids and parents. Our teaching gardens are using the power of fresh, colorful foods to empower kids to make healthy food choices economically.

If parents leave The Majestic Theater tonight learning just one thing, it is that sugar is hidden in many foods by many names. Sugar is a trigger for inflammation in the body. Inflammation causes diseases. The excess calories we are consuming with all this sugar is causing us to eat too much. Eliminating foods high in sugar, a highly processed ingredient with no nutritional value, and replacing them with fresh, unprocessed foods that contain nutrients and dietary fiber that fill us up is one of the most important steps a parent can take to improve their own health and the health of their children.

In order for our children to eat healthier, we must choose to eat healthier. To be healthy is to be whole. To be whole is holy (Deepak Chopra). I believe that together, we can and will find the solutions to the food crisis and the obesity crisis we are facing.

Start reading your food labels and look for "high fructose corn syrup". Look for "fruit juice concentrates" and "sugar" and "corn syrup" and "dextrose" and "molasses" and "malt sugar" and "fructose" and "honey" and "brown sugar" and "sucrose" and "lactose" and "maltose" and "invert sugar." These are some of the names for sugar in our foods.

I'm looking forward to the discussion Dr. William Elman and I will have with you tonight. We're making progress as evidenced by one 9 year old girl last Wednesday night. She has been a part of the Growing Healthy Kids project for the past 2 months at the Boys and Girls Club. She helped me represent Growing Healthy Kids to Boys and Girls Clubs of Indian River County donors at its annual Angels fundraising dinner held at Sun Aviation. For 2 hours, this little girl taught grown men and women all dressed up how to read a food label, what to look for, and how to eat healthy. The kids become the teachers. Yes, yes.

Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health - and lives - of America's children, one garden and one child at a time.

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