ACTIVITIES THAT PROMOTE HEALTHY EATING
Learning about healthy foods
While researching ideas for the new 4 week education program developed by Growing Healthy Kids, Inc. to improve the quality of foods that kids choose to eat, I recently came across a website containing some great ideas you may be able to use with your own kids. Kids love activities like word searches (hey, we all have a bit of Indiana Jones in us) and I have used some activities that the kids have loved doing. Tie these activities with your kids’ favorite fruits and vegetables and enjoy the result.
Check out the activities and recipes on www.nourishinteractive.com and let’s all start growing healthy kids!
Happy Mothers Day!
Nancy Heinrich
CREATING COLLABORATIONS WITH GET SHOT BY ELLA DESIGNS
Designers Ella Chabot and Barbara Petrillo
My friend, Ella Chabot of Get Shot by Ella Designs, stopped by the Growing Healthy Kids Variety Store the other day to share her expertise as an artist and writer. Ella designed the shirts which were featured in our FUSION OF FASHION AND FUN fashion show held last year at the breathtakingly beautiful Windsor Beach Club.
Ella and I are “cooking up” some new projects for 2012. Share YOUR ideas for collaborating in our 2012 education and art projects designed to help reverse childhood obesity, one child and one garden at a time. Email me at growinghealthykidsnow@gmail.com and let’s work together to improve the health – and lives – of America’s children, one garden and one child at a time.
Remember to take a child for a walk today – we adults need at least 30 minutes a day and kids need at least 60 minutes a day of physical activity.
Sincerely
Nancy Heinrich
Founder of the Growing Healthy Kids movement to halt, prevent, and reverse childhood obesity
VERO BEACH THRIFT SHOP HELPS GROWING HEALTHY KIDS
Inside the Growing Healthy Kids Variety Store
One of Vero Beach’s “hidden treasures” is located on 43rd Avenue at the west end of the Vero Beach Airport and around the corner from Piper Aircraft and Vero Beach Sports Village AKA Dodgertown.
Growing Healthy Kids Variety Store opened more than a year ago to offer a wide selection of high quality furniture, garden art, household items, mancave carved wood pieces, and gift items. Many people come into the store because someone told them of the quality items they will find. Some come because of the inspirational messages from the Growing Healthy Kids’ project scattered throughout the store. Lots of shoppers come for the selection, the great prices, and the treasures they find every day.
Nestled next to Vero Beach’s best coffee shop, Rio Coco Coffee, and adjacent to TheThrift Nation, Born Again Consignments, and C Ya at the Thrift, and Gathering Harvest Ministry (which distributes Publix bakery items every morning except Sunday), Growing Healthy Kids Variety Store is open Monday through Saturday 9 AM-5 PM (open to 4 PM on Saturdays). The store accepts gently used donations 6 days a week and pick up is available. If you would like to volunteer to help, just email to: growinghealthykidsnow@gmail.com or stop by the store and talk with Ben.
The neat thing about this non-profit thrift store is that 100% of profits are used to further the education projects in Indian River County aimed at empowering children and adults with the knowledge to eat healthier and prevent obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, bone and joint disorders, and high blood pressure. Add this Vero Beach hidden treasure to your fun shopping list.
Growing Healthy Kids Variety Store is located at 3300 43rd Avenue, Vero Beach, Florida, 32960 (one mile north of SR 60) and is open Monday-Friday 9 AM to 5 PM and Saturdays 9 AM-4 PM. Help support solutions to childhood obesity!
HONEYBELLS AND YOUR KIDS’ HEALTH
Remember that manual you got when you had your baby? The manual said: “Feed your children real food every day. Make sure they get some exercise every day. Don’t feed them too much sugar. Teach them to love fresh fruits and vegetables. Love them everyday. Spend time with them.”
I’m kidding about the “How to Raise a Child” manual because if they were handing them out when you have a baby, then they forgot to give me one. Being a parent is not an easy task. It is always rewarding and often a challenge. There are little rewards along the way that make every parent smile.
Here’s a little reward I’d like to share…This past weekend at the Vero Beach Green Market I bought some honeybell oranges from my friend Louis Schacht of Schacht Groves. Honeybells must be God’s candy because they are SO sweet and juicy. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” could apply to honeybells because they are only available in January of each year. They are a treat for Floridians as we anxiously look forward to January each year so we can load up on honeybells and ship them to family up in the cold north.
I cut up a honeybell in the kitchen and invited my son to have some for a snack. He is funny about trying new foods but he LOVED it.
Our kids need the vitamins, minerals, and fiber founds in fruits and vegetables. Oranges, such as honeybells, are rich in vitamin C and help keep our immune system (our ability to fight off diseases) strong. Share a honeybell with your child. Share healthy foods for healthy kids.
With gratitude for farmers like Louis Schacht. Check out: www.schachtgroves.com.
Sincerely,
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids, Inc….dedicated to improving the health of America’s children, one garden and one child at a time
MIRACLE ON 43RD AVENUE TONIGHT
Tis the season for remembering and celebrating the birth of Jesus.
Several shops, in an off-the-beaten path area of Vero Beach, are clustered together with missions for making the world a better place and improving the lives of children. We call it the Miracle on 43rd Avenue.
Where is this miracle located? Around the corner from the Indian River County Sheriffs Office and a mile north of State Road 60 on 43rd Avenue in Vero Beach at the west end of the Vero Beach Airport in three industrial buildings. Just south of Dodgertown Elementary School and the Supervisor of Elections office. Around the corner from what I will always call Dodgertown, where my son enjoyed years of Dodgers’ Spring Training games in the best and safest spring training facility in the country. Around the corner from what is now called the Vero Beach Sports Village. And a mile north of Nino’s Pizza and Young’s Produce Market.
It’s a miracle because we help each other to help others every day. Most of the shops, like ours – The Growing Healthy Kids Variety Store – are part of non-profit organizations to directly benefit kids and people. Most are based on the idea that we are here to serve others and make life better for people.
Come join us. Tonight the Miracle on 43rd Avenue shops will be open late until 7 PM. If you work in Vero Beach and live in Sebastian, we are on your way home. If you are in Vero, we are right around the corner from where you live or work.
Miracle on 43rd Avenue: Growing Healthy Kids Variety Store (3300 43rd Avenue) , our new next door neighbor-Rio Coco Coffee and Roastery (just opened!), A Thrift Nation, C Ya at the Thrift, and Born Again Consignments. Several others: Signs by Tomorrow and Color Wheel.
The Growing Healthy Kids shop will be open until 7 pm tonight. We have lots of great gift and thrift ideas to help you make this a special Christmas. I hope to see you!
Growing Healthy Kids is about improving the health – and lives – of America’s children, one garden and one child at a time. Thanks for all your help and your support of our work.
Merry Christmas, my friends!
Nancy Heinrich
Founder of the Growing Healthy Kids project to prevent, halt, and reverse childhood obesity
OBESITY MATTERS…and so does your health
Raising awareness among adults about the health epidemics among America’s kids who are overweight and obese is one of the primary goals of the Growing Healthy Kids’ movement. While we love best teaching kids how to choose, prepare, and eat healthy foods and increase their levels of physical activity, it is our conversation with adults that is central to how and when we will reverse the childhood obesity epidemic.
Why? You buy the foods that kids eat. You cook the foods that kids eat. You sit down and have dinner with your kids. Or not. These are all choices that can make a HUGE DIFFERENCE in kids’ health.
We all make choices. Choose to start learning at the beginning. Learn about whether your own weight places you at risk for obesity-related diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure. Oh, you already diabetes? Then you have an even bigger responsibility to your children and to yourself.
One of the tools used to determine whether or not you are at a healthy weight is the BODY MASS INDEX (BMI). There is one BMI tool for adults (it uses 2 variables – your height and your weight) and one for kids (it uses 4 – age, sex, height, and weight). This is the tool used most commonly for health risk assessments. Calculate your BMI here: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/index.html.
You don’t have to tell anyone what your BMI number is. If it is 30 or greater, we have work to do. Two in 3 American adults are overweight or obese. One-third of American kids are already overweight or obese. Guess what? We’re the role models. The reality is that our children’s generation will have a shorter lifespan than ours if we don’t start TODAY making better choices. That is why we are having this discussion today. If you don’t teach your children, who will?
Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health – and lives – of America’s kids, one child and one garden at a time.
Nancy L. Heinrich, M.P.H.
Author of Healthy Living with Diabetes: One Small Step at a Time (www.ourlittlebooks.com)
PS – The best place for more information is www.cdc.gov.
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN HUNGER AND OBESITY
When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, the food you eat may is not as healthy as someone who has “food security”. When fruit juices and drinks are cheaper than fresh fruit and you are surviving on an unemployment check, you’ll buy fruit drinks for your kids instead of the fruit.
The fact is that the fruit contains dietary fiber. The problem is that fruit juices and drinks contain no fiber. Yet, fiber is what fills us up. So what the kids are drinking is really just sugar. Lots of it and too much of it. The sugar they’re drinking is not filling them up, so they will eat several dollar menu burgers made on the cheap white flour buns you find at McDonald’s and Burger King without ever getting filled up. Since there is no fiber in the juice or the bread, they remain hungry. They will overeat to compensate for the lack of the fiber in what they are eating, so it is assured they will gain too much weight.
I’m hoping that Treasure Coast Food Bank CEO Judith Cruz can be our superman. She knows about hunger and food insecurity. Ms. Cruz has just been appointed to Feeding America’s strategic planning committee to help formulate the national hunger relief agency’s next 5-year plan to ”close the country’s meal gap.”
During the Great Depression, people looked emaciated and gaunt. They stood in bread lines. Food was rationed. Now, during our current depression, we are seeing the opposite. The picture of the current depression is obesity. Yesterday I was in Walmart and walking ahead of me in the cereal aisle was a morbidly obese woman who looked big enough to be 3 women. The children with her were obese. Obesity is a direct result of food choices. It is also the result of food insecurity. Food insecurity is something Ms. Cruz fights to end every day.
If we are to reverse childhood obesity in America, we must have a national discussion in every community about improving access to real food like fresh fruits and vegetables. Volunteer your time and money to your local food bank and support your local farmers and green markets. Start your own Victory Garden in your back yard. Then grow extra vegetables and give away the surplus.
This is America, land of plenty, but 30% of the kids on the Treasure Coast of Florida don’t know where their next meal is coming from. We can do better. Failure to feed our children healthy foods is not an option.
Here’s a couple of resources to check out: www.stophunger.org and www.feedingamerica.org.
We live in the greatest country in the world. Now we need to make sure our children know it.
Nancy L. Heinrich, M.P.H.
Founder of the Growing Healthy Kids movement to reverse childhood obesity
Dr. Oz Addresses Obesity
Did you get the Sunday newspaper today? Parade Magazine has a note about the ever-ready bunny Dr. Oz. His Smart Move of the Week is about knowing your Body Mass Index.
As you know, Growing Healthy Kids is an organization and a movement about reversing childhood obesity. If kids are going to succeed in getting to a healthier weight, then the adults who surround them had better get on the band wagon first. How are we going to affect children’s eating and exercise habits if we don’t have the courage to first start with our own habits?
Find out what your own BMI is at www.cdc.gov or check out www.doctoroz.com.
Growing Healthy Kids is about reversing childhood obesity and preventing obesity-related diseases like diabetes, cancer, and high blood pressure.
To your perfect health,
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids – improving the health – and lives – of America’s kids, one child and one garden at a time.
Too Young for an Insulin Pump?
Author participates in inner city service project
Last week while working in Philadelphia I met a man who was recently diagnosed with diabetes. He was obviously overweight. I’m guessing he is in his late 30s or early 40s.
What surprised and shocked me was when this man said he has asked his doctor about getting an insulin pump. He already knew which brand he favored- OMNIPOD. Sounds like those advertising dollars are working.
I asked him one question, which was, “How many people have you spoken with who use an insulin pump?” He answered, “None.” I gave him a homework assignment: to talk with 10 people who have an insulin pump. What bothers me is that Big Pharma makes their solutions sound sexy.
Here’s something else that bothers me. We know that most people with type 2 diabetes can control it and often reverse it with changes in what and how much they eat and with increases in their physical activity. When you apply these changes and take off some or all of the excess weight you are carrying around, guess what? Your blood sugars return to normal. Your blood pressure also improves as well your blood fats. When you lose weight, you don’t need the same amount of medicines. I’ve worked with a lot of adults who taper off most or all of their diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol medicines when they focus on getting to a healthier weight.
According to the Standards of Medical Care from American Diabetes Association, nutrition and physical activity are the first line of treatment. If these do not control the diabetes, THEN medications are indicated.
In real life, something else happens. All too often, doctors are quick to prescribe because it is easy. All too often, doctors do not engage in meaningful discussions which will prompt improved outcomes using nutrition and physical activity changes.
My advice? Eat real foods. Avoid the processed foods which are high in calories, fat, and bad carbs. Learn the difference between the “good carbs” (like whole grains) and the “bad carbs” (like white flour and white sugar). Walk. Watch funny movies (helps reduce stress). Set a good example for the kids in your life. The path that looks easy now may not turn out to be so easy in the long run.
For more information about the Standards of Medical Care, go to www.diabetes.org. For easy-to-use resources that teach you all the basics about healthy eating when you have diabetes or prediabetes, including recipes that use everyday ingredients and questions to ask your physician, go to www.healthydiabetescoach.com.
Cheers to your health!
Nancy Heinrich
Kass, Kids, and Cauliflower
This caught my eye today. I love the part about, “She liked the cauliflower.” It reminds me of how we use fresh cauliflower we grow here and using it to make “mashed cotatoes.” Eat your veggies and eat rainbows! Bring it on, Sam! Read about Sam Kass, Assistant White House Chef at www.msnbc.com.
Growing Healthy Kids is designing and delivering new programs to reverse, prevent, and halt childhood obesity. Why? So that America’s kids will not continue to acquire obesity-related “adult” diseases like type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.
Yours in health,
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids