Everyone is busy getting their kids back to school.  What a perfect time to take a little break and bring the kids to a Family Night that will mix fruits and vegetables and lots of FUN.  Nourish Interactive has been working with Fresh Choice to reach out to kids and promote healthy eating.  With September being National Childhood Obesity Awareness month, it is a reminder to us how important healthy foods and daily activity is for kids.

We are happy to let our San Mateo, CA and nearby Peninsula cities know that the Fresh Choice Restaurant in San Mateo will host its First Family Night.  Nourish Interactive will be there with nutrition education games to make fruits and vegetables fun for kids.

Click to go to Facebook Event Page!

Take a night off from cooking and enjoy fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables from their local farm while the kids have some fun learning about healthy food choices.

Just a few of the FREE & FUN nutrition activities for kids:

• Take a picture with Chef Solus
• Play Nourish Interactive Games- winner of Parents’ Choice Seal and Children’s Library Association Award
• Play tic-tac-toe   The vegetables versus Chef Solus
• Coloring fruits and vegetables while kids learn where produce really comes from!
• Spin the wheel, land on a fruit or vegetable and win a prize!
• Healthy eating out tips for parents to take home.
• Each child will have their name entered into a contest and have a chance to win a Wii game system.

Play the Yummy Drops Fruit Game and automatically get a FREE Kids meal coupon for Fresh Choice Restaurant!

More information:

Family Night event at Fresh Choice Restaurant in San Mateo, CA

Fresh Choice and Nourish Interactive Partnership

Nourish Interactive partnered with Fresh Choice!

I’m Maggie LaBarbera, RN founder of Nourish Interactive- The Fun Way to Learn About Nutrition. I am excited to announce that four of my games are finalists in Apps for Healthy Kids Contest, sponsored by the “Let’s Move” Campaign.The Let’s Move Campaign is lead by our First Lady, Michelle Obama with a mission to fight childhood obesity.

The public is encouraged to vote for their favorite games which will determine the winner of the Popular Award. Popular Choice is where you come in! You can support our free healthy nutrition games by voting for the 4 games

Update- Vote soon the contest ends August 14th! Chef Solus’ Food Pyramid Adventure Game has the best chance, of the four games we have in the finals, of winning- you can help by going directly to this link:

Chef Solus’ on Apps for Healthy Kids to vote for this one game!
It take about 3 minutes.

We are so proud to be part of this contest and join other game developers in finding fun and creative solutions for kids. This recognition would really go a long way in helping us to reach more children and produce more free games and tools in English and Spanish! And that is what we want to do but need your help.

Large international gaming companies, hospitals, and universities have games in finals, they have access to a huge network of employees and associates to get support from for votes. We are a small California start-up made up of moms who are RNs and RDs and we can’t win without your support!

About Apps for Healthy Kids Challenge
Michelle Obama is looking for innovative ways to reach out to children and help them learn the importance of healthy eating and being active.  She launched this contest to challenge the nation to come up with creative tools and games that are fun and would engage children all the while promoting healthy choices.  Once again, the Obamas are seeing the value of technology and the importance of FUN when reaching out to children.

Well, FUN and healthy choices and games!  Yes, that is exactly what Nourish Interactive is all about.  Helping kids be healthier through early and FUN online games and tools.  So we were very excited about this challenge and more excited that our games have been been accepted into the contest!

We hope you choose to vote for us, you can vote for 1 game or all 4 games that we have in the contest.

Register HERE- Let’s Move Apps for Healthy Kids

Each link below will bring you to the contest page where you can try the game and vote!

Chef Solus and the Food Pyramid Adventure The food pyramid comes to life as kids travel through each slice and learn about the food groups in this fun adventure game

Healthy Harvest Maze kids learn about fruits and vegetables as they travel through a farm maze and harvest fruits and vegetables

Ride the Food Label kids learn how to read a food label and take a little virtual quiz

Kevin’s Build a Meal kids create a customize meal based on the USDA guidelines as they enter a virtual kitchen, school cafeteria and grocery store

Please check out our games and vote- we really appreciate your vote!

You can help spread the word and show support for our games by placing this banner on your webpage, blog, facebook, myspace, twitter! Please help us spread the word and to show your support copy and paste code:

<a href=”http://nourishinteractive.com/healthy-kids-games-contest” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://nourishinteractive.com/images/nutrition-games/Badge-childhood-obesity-apps-forhealthykids-contest.gif” /></a>

Thank you so much for your continued support!

About our Website and Games

Maggie LaBarbera, RN

We are a based company that is dedicated to supporting parents by providing them with useful information to help them improve their families health and nutrition and are devoted to educating children about the importance of nutrition and exercise.  We have over 37,000 members and 4000+ organizations that use our FREE website and educational games to help teach children and families about the importance of healthy eating and daily exercise!

We believe in the power of prevention and that starts by investing in our children’s health today. We acknowledge and support the key roles of both the parents and the health educators. All games are available in English or Spanish and the kids’ pages and games are completely ad- free. Read more about the Nourish Interactive and it’s mission.

Sincerely,

Maggie LaBarbera and The Nourish Interactive Team

( Moms, RNs and Registered Dietitians who believe all children should have access to quality early nutrition education. We hope you visit our website it’s fun and free!)

Related Resources:

See all of our free nutrition games and read about the nutrition concepts they teach- We have over 20 interactive nutrition education games for kids!

Nutrition Tools for Teaching-  online tools, lesson plans and printable healthy tips for schools,  youth centers, community websites

For Parents Healthy family tips sheets, mini wellness articles with kid-friendly tips, and more!

You may be interested in our visitor and member comments

See our showcase of organizations, schools, cities, websites and bloggers who share our free games with their communities

Sign up for free membership

Contest Information

Read more about our submission

Read the rules for contest

Contest Prizes and Judging

Thank you Teachers for a wonderful year of learning.   We want you to know that we appreciate the caring and supportive manner in which you teach our children every day.  We applaud your dedication and part in raising a healthy child and incorporating nutrition education as part of your curriculum.

Nutrition is really the core subject for creating a healthy child and to say thank you, Nourish Interactive made this image just for you!

Have a wonderful summer and looking forward to more nutrition fun at the start of the new school year!

Resources:

Summer Backpack Kit - Keep the kids on track for healthy choices this summer with a daily healthy tips calendar, snacking tips and a cute healthy snacks tracking sheet.

Michelle Obama released her plan to fight childhood obesity.  Her goal is to solve the problem within a generation which is a pretty ambitious goal.  This means decreasing childhood obesity rates to 5% by the year 2030!

Her plan entails implementing an interagency plan that details a coordinated strategy with clearly defined goals, benchmarks and measureable outcomes to ensure success.  I fully agree that there must be accountability if we are going to truly “stop talking and studying this problem” and move towards “making significant impactful changes to address the problem”.    Don’t get me wrong, we need data and analysis but it seems that is where the government gets stuck.  Creating task forces to study problems and  we need to shift energies to action and implemented solutions.

Here is a summary of the recommendations:

• Getting children a healthy start on life, with good prenatal care for their parents; support for breastfeeding; adherence to limits on “screen time”; and quality child care settings with nutritious food and ample opportunity for young children to be physically active.
• Empowering parents and caregivers with simpler, more actionable messages about nutritional choices based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans; improved labels on food and menus that provide clear information to help parents make healthy choices for children; reduced marketing of unhealthy products to children; and improved health care services, including BMI measurement for all children.
• Providing healthy food in schools, through improvements in federally-supported school lunches and breakfasts; upgrading the nutritional quality of other foods sold in schools; and improving nutrition education and the overall health of the school environment.
• Improving access to healthy, affordable food, by eliminating “food deserts” in urban and rural America; lowering the relative prices of healthier foods; developing or reformulating food products to be healthier; and reducing the incidence of hunger, which has been linked to obesity.
• Getting children more physically active, through quality physical education, recess, and other opportunities in and after school; addressing aspects of the “built environment” that make it difficult for children to walk or bike safely in their communities; and improving access to safe parks, playgrounds, and indoor and outdoor recreational facilities.

I applaud her conviction, dedication and tenacity in leading the fight against childhood obesity and helping to bring it to the nation’s center spotlight.

Please share your thoughts and related resources below.

I am happy to share that this blog has been listed as the top 100 parenting advice blogs by Nurse Practitioner Schools. org, a nonprofit organization.

Nourishing Thoughts is listed under the Nutrition Category.

Thank you for your continued support, feedback and links back to this blog.  By working together, we can help parents in a positive way make nutrition a key part of their everyday lives.

Nurse Practitioner School is a website devoted to provide information and support nurses who are entering the Nurse Practitioner program.  This blog provides articles on topics that affect the health of the community.

Michelle Obama announced today, May 17, 2010,  that the Food and Beverage Manufacturer have agreed to make changes to their food products that will result in a 1.5 trillion calorie reduction by 2015.  That’s a lot of calories!

So what exactly does that mean.

The companies that support the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation will be offering more lower calorie options food products and creating new foods that are lower in calories.

How exactly will they do this?

• changing product recipes where possible to lower the calorie content of current products
• reducing portion sizes of existing single-serve products

I think this is a good step in the right direction and my only concern is that the food manufacturers don’t start adding chemicals and unnatural additives to substitute for lower fats and sugars in the food products.  So read the labels to make sure that low fat or low sugar or “low calorie” items are not be compensated with chemicals to make them taste good.  It is really in our hands.  If we don’t buy unhealthy foods, food manufacturers will stop making them.  If we want smaller portion goods, than we need to buy it.  That is what drives these companies, it is their sales.

But I really have a great deal of respect for Michelle Obama because she is serious in her quest.   We hear about changes all the time, but don’t really see them because there is no accountability.  Michelle doesn’t just want talk, she wants results.  To help make sure that these companies are going to honor their commitment:

“The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) will support a rigorous, independent evaluation of how the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation’s efforts to reduce calories in the marketplace affect calories consumed by children and adolescents. RWJF will publicly report its findings.”   (from press release)

Well, I will be watching and sharing more news on this topic  as it comes out.
If you have thoughts, opinions or ideas about this, please share them below

I am happy to share with you some exciting news.  Nourish Interactive has teamed up with Fresh Choice Restaurants to promote healthy eating to kids.

To combat all the junk food marketing, we need to also provide fun “marketing” or education about healthy foods.  ie. “It is fun to eat healthy foods!”  That is our goal and by extending ourselves into this restaurant, we can work together to offer kids healthy foods while they are learning about healthy eating in a positive way.

We are very excited about this partnership because Fresh Choice is very much aligned with our goals to promote healthy eating in a fun and positive way.  Fresh Choice has their own farm and serves fresh produce as part of their daily menu.

I can honestly say, that when my children were young, we went to this restaurant because it was affordable, catered to families and their foods were nutritious.  You won’t find a 600 calorie burger at this restaurant.  But the selection is healthy and varied enough so that the kids and adults could all find dishes that were delicious.  That is not always easy to find as a parent.

And as part of our partnership,

• we will be promoting nutrition to kids in the restaurant through fun positive messaging.  For example, this month, kids will receive a free nutrition coloring page to enjoy as the family enjoys their meal
• offering a free kids meal coupon to kids that play the new Yummy Drops game (our new online game that promotes the fruit group. )

About our In-Restaurant Nutrition Education for Kids

We are starting with a farm to table education series.  It is surprising but many kids don’t really know where fruits and vegetables come from.  Our goal is to help them learn in a fun way where fruits and vegetables come from as they journey from the farm to the restaurant.  There is much research indicating that helping kids connect with fresh fruits and vegetables will peak their interest and taste buds to eat more of them.  We know that most kids do not get their adequate servings of fruits and vegetables and our mission is to change that.

And this is just the start.  We have lots of other ideas on how to reach out to kids during their restaurant experience to promote healthy food choices!

Look for Chef Solus and the produce bunch at the Fresh Choice Restaurant!

How to get your Free Kids Meal Coupon:

Just have your child play the Yummy Drops game (also available in Spanish) and then at the end of the game,  click on the link that says “Open your surprise”.   This will open a pdf that has a little maze game, certificate for being an Ace Pilot and delivering fresh fruits, and a free kids’ meal coupon for Fresh Choice Restaurants and Zoopa Restaurants.

Just print the kids meal coupon and bring it the nearest Fresh Choice or Zoopa Restaurant.

Located in the California, Washington and Texas (Find a Fersh Choice or Zoopa Restaurant near you)

“Farm Fresh Food Coloring Page” for kids- Fresh Choice “Fun Pages”

More About Fresh Choice and Why We Feel They Are A Great Partner

These were the characteristics about this Restaurant that really impressed me:

Fresh Choice is committed to healthy foods (See their menu for yourself):

• all their fresh fruits and vegetables come from local farms, including their own Fresh Choice farm
• their dishes are designed to use the seasonal fruits and vegetables, everything is fresh (really just picked)
• all their foods are well labeled and every dish has the calories listed to help patrons make informed portion selections
• Fresh Choice offers a very impressive spread of healthy foods, mostly great salads, vegetables and fruits
• their dips, dressings and desserts are all available in the low calorie versions
• they also have healthy pizzas! that taste great and kids love

Cater to families:

• they are very affordable for families
• they have a casual environment which is great for kids
• they work with the community to promote reading through their “Lettuce Read” program
• they support fund raising for schools

Fresh Choice commitment to the environment:

• participates in the ClimateSmart program to reduce greenhouse gases.  Their changes are estimated to reduce 8.8 million pounds of greenhouse emissions (equivalent to taking 731 cars off the road each year.)

Quick Resources:

Free Kids Meal Coupon- Play Game – get your free kids meal coupon, while your child hears some positive messaging about fruits

Yummy Drops Game in Spanish

Fresh Choice Partnership page

Fresh Choice Restaurant locations

Fresh Choice Menu

Yesterday was Earth Day and a reminder of the importance of fresh fruits and vegetables.

In honor of Earth Day, we have put together some of our favorite coloring sheets that promote healthy fresh fruits and vegetables and farming coloring sheets.

Please hit the share button and help us spread the fun to kids – It’s fun to learn about fresh fruits and vegetables. Also, eating healthy fresh foods saves our planet!

You’ll reduce your carbon footprint by cutting back on meat just once a week. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the meat industry generates nearly 1/5 of the man-made greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating climate change worldwide. Our precious water resources are exhausted daily and the demand continues to grow. Approximately 1,800 to 2,500 gallons of water go into a single pound of beef. This total far surpasses the amount of water needed for vegetables and grains.

Slideshow of our Healthy Fruits, Vegetables, Farming Coloring Pages

Visit our website to get full size version to print out and share with kids:

Eating Healthy Fruits and Vegetables-Fun Learn and Color Activities

Farm to Table- Fresh Foods Coloring Pages for Kids

Tips for Increasing daily vegetables and fruits - ‘Nourish Healthy Kids’ article for parents

Coloring, Activity Pages, Games, Tools and Articles are Available in English or Spanish

This week is National “Turn off your TV” week.

This offers a reason to limit TV time or even turn off the TV!  Kids may protest a little but if you have some substitute activities lined up, they may soon forget about TV and enjoy the many other activities they could be doing.

If you are not quite sure how to tackle this with the kids but definitely would like to reduce the amount of time on the TV, start with reading our step by step guide.  Honestly, we keep it short, to the point with lots of specific tips broken down so anyone can try it.  Read the “Turn off the TV” guide.

Next, you will need to come up with some substitute activities otherwise you will find yourself with a bored and complaining child, which is not fun.  We have a list of 25 indoor and 25 outdoor activities you can try.

I would say the most important first step is to involve the kids so they understand why it is important and have them help come up with ideas.  Make a fun family tradition, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised how easy it can be to “turn off the tv”.

Make it important, sign a family contract to Turn off the TV for one week. Can you take the challenge!?!

And finally, let me share with you some important facts :

• Number of 30-second commercials seen in a year by an average child:    20,000
• Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children:    38.5
• Number of minutes per week that the average child watches television:       1,680
• Percentage of children ages 6-17 who have TV’s in their bedrooms:    50
• Percentage of day care centers that use TV during a typical day:    70
• Hours per year the average American youth spends in school:      900 hours
• Hours per year the average American youth watches television:     1500
• Percentage of Americans that regularly watch television while eating dinner:    66

(source: turnoffyourtv.com)

List of Resources to get you started:

“Turn off the TV” guide.

Printable- Limiting TV Time Hours Kids Agreement Sheet

Printable TV Pledge- Family and Kids Turn Off TV Week

Reducing Kids TV Time Weekly Goals Tracking Chart

Healthy Tips-Kids Healthy Snack Food Ideas

Turn Off The TV Tips- Fun Activities For Kids

Tomorrow is the YMCA Healthy Kids Day and there will be activities and events hosted throughout the United States.  Talk about a fun event that is all about reminding kids about the importance of daily exercise and healthy eating!

This year’s theme is “Put Play in your Day!”

Check your local YMCA and see what is going on.  Take the kids and let them hear and learn about healthy living from others in the community which will be helpful in reinforce what you are saying!  It is this kind of synergy that we need to help kids turn around the childhood obesity trend in a very positive way.

We will be at the San Mateo Family YMCA on Grant Street and looking forward to meeting families and kids and promoting healthy eating.

Find a Healthy Kids Day event at the YMCA near you.  Just scroll to the bottom of the page and enter in your zip code.

Also, you can download this YMCA list of participating centers, listed by state.

Other resources:

Helping kids be more active

Being Active Ideas

Fun “Be a Move It” kids Family Contract

Being Active Cute Coloring Tracking Sheet