“My son always talks about food, but since attending the
Growing Healthy Kids’ program, he only talks about eating healthy foods now.” -- Parent of a 12 year old boy in a recent GHK program
For the past two weeks, Wellness Wednesdays has been about diabetes. Guess what! Due to the amount of social media
response we've received, we’re doing it again! This
issue of Wellness Wednesdays will wrap up our September diabetes series by
sharing resources from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) AND a
delicious recipe created in the Growing Healthy Kids Test Kitchen!
When someone tells me they can’t afford to eat healthy, my
usual response is, “Give me an hour and I’ll show you how.” What I REALLY want to say is, “You think
eating healthy is expensive? Try paying
for diabetes.”
For the sake of our children, parents owe it to themselves
to learn how to lose weight, eat healthy, and be more active. Then teach your kids how to eat right and be
more active. Here’s the problem: I see a lot of parents who take great care of
themselves and then buy crap for their kids.
Don’t be like them. I’m talking
about the parents wearing the cool fitness or yoga clothes with their
high-priced salon hair shopping with their children with a grocery cart filled
with crap for the kids. You know what I’m
talking about: cases of those high
sodium ramen noodles, cases of sodas filled with high fructose corn syrup and 3
days’ worth of sugar, pizzas with 850 mg of sodium PER SLICE, and don’t forget
the case of honeybuns!
Eat healthy and be more active. Shop at the local farmers
market and buy vegetables and fruits that are in season. Plan your week’s menus around those
foods. Let the kids tear up the salad
greens you just bought from the local farmer and make the salad dressing in a jar (to encourage recycling and
reusing). Create your own Wellness
Wednesdays Salad Bowls. Cook up a pot of
quinoa, then layer up salad greens, shredded carrots, sliced celery, diced
organic tomatoes and avocado. Top with a
½ cup of cooked quinoa, add the vinaigrette dressing (2 parts olive oil, 1 part apple cider or red wine vinegar, a little local honey, and fresh black pepper) and dinner is served. Simple, delicious, and healthy in under an
hour!
Lesson for preventing diabetes in adults: lose weight, eat healthy, and be more active. For your kids? Eat healthy and be more active. Got it? Good! Now, off to the kitchen to cook up some quinoa for Wellness Wednesdays Salad Bowls!
America needs Growing Healthy Kids, not kids with diabetes. Be the change.
America needs Growing Healthy Kids, not kids with diabetes. Be the change.
In gratitude,
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids, Inc.
For more information about preventing diabetes, go to CDC's website by clicking here. For more healthy recipes to prevent diabetes, click on the link on the top right of this page and get a copy of Nourish and Flourish!
For more information about preventing diabetes, go to CDC's website by clicking here. For more healthy recipes to prevent diabetes, click on the link on the top right of this page and get a copy of Nourish and Flourish!
