Are you looking for an easy (and educational) way to brighten up a classroom, hallway, office, or cafeteria? Check out our What’s On Your Fork poster, bulletin board banner, and wall decals. They feature beautiful, professional photographs of real, healthy food on a black background – these really stand out!
There are so many fun things you can do with the What’s on Your Fork theme. Here are just a few ideas:
What’s on Your Fork display: Start with our banner or poster, or make your own visual materials with pictures of fruits, vegetables, healthy protein sources, and whole grains. Leave space for people to add pictures of what’s on their own forks.
Kids can cut out pictures of healthy food from magazines or supermarket flyers, tape them to plastic forks, and create their own display.
What’s on Your Fork selfies: Encourage people to snap a picture when they’re eating healthy food (if it’s on a fork, that’s fun; if not, that’s fine too!). They can share it on social media (#WhatsOnYourFork), share it with a friend, or keep it private.
What’s on Your Fork with food groups: Let clients decide which food group they want to focus on and have them take pictures of what’s on their fork for one day, three days, or a week. Someone who needs to eat more vegetables would take a picture whenever there’s a veggie on their fork (or spoon, or plate, or bowl!). Do the same for fruits, whole grains, and lean protein.
What’s on Your Fork sugar control: People might say they’re going to limit themselves to 1-2 treats a week, but “forget” when they walk by a candy dish or are offered a piece of birthday cake. Have them snap a picture when they eat a sweet treat (on or off a fork!) and keep it on their phone. Then every time they’re tempted by something sugary, they check their phone to see the last time they had one.
I was recently stuck at the airport on the way home from a trip to New Orleans. It was lunch time and after a weekend of jambalaya, etouffee, gumbo, bananas Foster, and beignets, what I really wanted was a big healthy salad.
Lucky for me, I found a pretty nice pre-made salad at an airport shop. That’s the great thing about salad – you can get one just about anywhere. The catch? When it comes to nutrition, not all salads are created equal. Teach your clients to build a healthy salad wherever they are with our beautiful Salad Themed materials.
Start with our Fall In Love With Salad poster. It’s a bestseller and the content is aligned with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, MyPlate, and the Offer Versus Serve Program. And it comes with handouts, including salad fact sheets, fun puzzles, and recipes.
Use the poster’s key healthy salad messages for individual counseling or group sessions:
6 Salad Lover Tips, like choosing darker greens, piling on colorful veggies and fruits, watching out for high fat toppings, adding protein, and using a healthy but tasty dressing.
3 Reasons to Love Salad: it’s a great way to fit more veggies into your day, eat fewer calories, and get more nutrients and fiber.
How to spice up your salad with different ingredients, like Mandarin oranges, water chestnuts, or arugula.
Play “what should it be?”. Create a virtual salad using the audience’s favorite vegetables and writing these down on a dry erase board. Calculate the calories quickly by googling “calories for x” with x being the vegetable and let everyone in the audience help. Add them up. Most salads are less than 100 calories. Then go to the fast food websites and check out the calories for popular salads and check out those calories, which often go above the sandwiches and burgers. Why is there a greater difference? See if the audience can guess. By putting the dressing on the side and making smarter choices they can ensure that their salad is a low-calorie choice! Check out a visual comparison here.
To remind people to eat a healthy salad every day, give them one of our I Love Salad wristbands. What’s not to love about salad?
Many areas of the country are cloudy and gray this time of the year. What we need is some color! Until spring decides to make an appearance, feast your eyes on our Colors of Health themed materials.
Brighten up the cafeteria with our gorgeous Color Your World With Food salad bar sign. (It also works fine as a table top sign.) With beautiful pictures on both sides, this sign doesn’t need a bunch of words to encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables.
For smaller spaces and bulletin boards, our Color Your World With Food poster is just what you need. It adds a big pop of color and shouts “eat your fruits & veggies!”
Let everyone take home some color with our Colors of Food bookmarks and stickers. These are bound to make them long for opening day at the farmer’s market. Remind them that frozen fruits and veggies are a great option all year long.
Have some fun with our new Fruit and Vegetable Masks! They’re easy to put on and will fit all ages. More than 20 varieties of fruits and vegetables are featured, so be sure to see who can name them.
Ask everyone what they ate for dinner last night. How many colors are included in the answers?
Take a tour of a farmer’s market for spring. What is the dominant color? The answer is probably green!
See if everyone can guess what this vegetable is called!
The answer is Romanesco! It is a cross between cauliflower and broccoli and has a nice delicate flavor when roasted with a little olive oil and garlic. Enjoy!
Use this link to get 15% off the collection this week only.
A recent study in a Colorado preschool found that providing children’s plates with compartments with images of fruits and veggies increased how much they added to their plate and consequently, consumed. The study included 325 children. For three days during lunchtime in one week, kids were given plates with pictures of fruits and vegetables. Observations were done to see how much they added to their plates and ate. Those days were then compared to three days in a prior week with their normal plain white plates. 1
According to the study, kids served themselves about 44 grams of vegetables each day using the experimental plates, in comparison to 30 grams using their regular plates. In addition, they consumed more veggies: an average of 28 grams using experimental plates versus 21 grams with regular white plates.1
Using experimental plates, kids served themselves approximately 64 grams of fruit, an increase from about 60 grams previously. They ate an average of 55 grams of fruit using experimental plates compared to 51 grams previously.1
Emily Melnick, the study’s co-author from the University of Colorado states, “Pictures on lunch plates may indicate a social norm of vegetable and fruit consumption to nudge children’s dietary behaviors in a classroom setting. These pictures suggest that other children take fruits and vegetables from classroom serving bowls and place them in those compartments and that they should do the same,”.1
Melnick believes the kids in the experiment, similar to children in several preschool classrooms, ate family style meals as this type of dining behavior can encourage children to regulate their food intake, feel in control regarding food choices, learn about food and recognize hunger levels.1 Prior to the study, researchers weighed how much fruit and vegetables kids served themselves using regular white plates over the course of three days. A five-minute presentation was provided by the researchers to the children for the experiment week explaining the new plates with images showing compartments for fruits and vegetables at the start of the week. Children were provided the same meals before the study, and researchers repeated weighing how much children gave themselves and consumed.1
Although kids increased both the amount of fruits and vegetables they served themselves and ate, the difference in fruit intake was too small to rule out the possibility of it being due to chance. Children were eating more fruit than vegetables to start with, the researchers noted in their JAMA Pediatrics article. Children took close to 89% of available fruits versus 65% of available vegetables.1 In children, fruit intake has increased, though fruit and vegetable intake remain too low, according to the CDC. 2
Vandana Sheth, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and dietitian in private practice notes it’s not clear if the classroom experiment could be repeated at home. She states, “If this is repeatable at home, it can be a simple technique practiced by families and have a significant impact on their long-term health. “We know that early childhood dietary behaviors can affect their food choices and eating decisions into adulthood and have a long-term effect,” Sheth added. “If something as simple as putting pictures on plates to encourage food choice and amount can work, it’s worth a try.” Sheth was not involved in the study.1
2. Li, Meng, Melnick, E Association of plate design with consumption of fruits and vegetables among preschool children. JAMA Pediatr. Published online August 6, 2018. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.1915
Do you keep your holiday celebrations good for your health? Find out with this brand-new quiz!
Questions:
1. What is the most featured item in the display of foods at your holiday party?
a) Cookies
b) Meats
c) Fruits and vegetables
d) Cheeses
2. True or false? I make sure to get at least some physical activity during most days of the week.
3. Some smart ways to control portion size at meals include…
a) Making a healthy plate.
b) Sharing a meal
c) Being aware of the calorie content of the foods you purchase.
d) All of the above
4. True or false? I make sure to eat a healthful high-fiber breakfast every morning.
Answers:
1. c) Fruits and vegetables
For the most healthful holiday celebration, make fruits and vegetables the start of any buffet you set up. You can keep things simple with crudités and some yogurt-based dips, or you can get fancy and roast up your favorite vegetables and serve them on a platter, drizzled with a little bit of sauce and garnished with parsley. Add bowls of berries and sliced fruit too!
2. True
To stay healthy during the holidays, it’s wise to sneak in a little physical activity whenever you can, even though things are busy. According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, “Being physically active is one of the most important steps that Americans of all ages can take to improve their health.”
3. d) All of the above
If you’re having a holiday gathering at a restaurant or coffee shop, check out any nutrition information that’s available online. Make sure that the portion size of what you want to order is reasonable. If it’s not, look for alternatives. Then, if you want to get or make something that only comes in a large portion, share it with a friend or family member. Finally, if you’re picking up a treat for a holiday gathering, check the labels! Use the Nutrition Facts to calculate serving size, nutrient content, and much more! Making a healthy plate will help you put your foods in the right proportions, too.
4. True
Starting your day off with a balanced and high-fiber breakfast is a smart way to stay healthy this holiday season. After all, breakfast is associated with a lower BMI, fewer calories consumed during the day, and a better diet. Plus, a healthful breakfast not only gives you energy, but also increases cognitive function. Some ideas include high-fiber cereal with nonfat milk, and fruit, or lowfat yogurt and fruit, or egg whites and fruit. A smoothie made with fruit and skim milk is also a great start.
How did you do? Do you know the nuts and bolts of staying healthy during the holidays?
Here are some new educational resources that just happen to be both creative and engaging.
Walloons!
What are walloons, you ask?
They’re wall decals shaped like balloons. You can use them as decorations and teaching tools.
These wall decals come in handy when you want to add a little pizzazz to your walls. They’re great anywhere that you might want to fill in the space between posters, and they are spectacular in cafeterias, exam rooms, classrooms, offices, and more! I created them after I got a request from our dietitian customer Sonya Angelone, MS, RD, who wanted to perk up her children’s school cafeteria. They have been hanging on the walls there ever since. Sonya said the walls looked bare and she wanted to have some fun and positive decals that matched our fruit and vegetable balloons. We had these drawn up by our artist and Sonya fell in love with them so we made a special order of these wall decals for her. We figured everyone else might want some. They are perfect for walls that cannot hang posters or walls that need sprucing up or small places. You can even stick them on bulletin boards. See below for our directions for how you can make your own, too!
There are several varieties of walloons to choose from. Which best match your style?
The What’s on Your Fork? Walloons are the newest additions to the Nutrition Education Store and are perfect for National Nutrition Month. After all, the theme is “Put Your Best Fork Forward.”
Of course you can also make your own walloons. Draw a balloon with a black magic marker on a large white piece of paper. Copy it on a copy machine. Allow everyone to cut and paste their favorite food photos on the balloons. Then adhere the balloons to the wall using a 3d removable poster tape. This allows them to stick to the wall but keeps them removable, too. Of course you can also have everyone take pictures of their forks for your social media channel. Be sure to use a hashtag that reflects your name so you can post them with ease.
The food you buy has a huge impact on your eating habits. Make sure that the choices you make are healthful and balanced, starting at the grocery store.
What does that mean?
Well, since MyPlate advises you to fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables at each meal, roughly half your cart should be full of fruits and vegetables in the store. Make lean protein choices, and select dairy foods that are low in saturated fat and added sugars. When it comes to grain foods, make sure that at least half of all the grains you’re eating are whole grains. Skip those processed grains whenever you can.
More Shopping Tips!
My Plate advises people to “Compare sodium content for similar foods, using the Nutrition Facts label to select brands lower in sodium.” The next time you’re in the store, grab a couple of different options for an ingredient and compare the sodium content. Choose one of the options with lower numbers.
Watch out for portion size! When you’re in the store, look at the serving size and number of servings in the food that you’d like to buy. Is it realistic? Will a sugary soda bottle really be used for 2 or 3 separate servings, or, despite what it says on the label, is the drink really going to be consumed all at once? Remember, MyPlate wants to help people enjoy food but eat less of it, counseling, “Avoid oversized portions.”
Here’s a printable MyPlate handout that you can use however you see fit!
We love special requests. Here is a recent one for a Gluten Free Information Poster which shows the safe, gluten-free grains that are common:
Gluten free is not always easy but hopefully we have made it easier. Thanks to Pat Hunter, MS, RD, for her request.
Here is another request from Goleta School District. They wanted a sign to jazz up their salad bar. So we did a little research here in the Boulder school district to find out what they are doing. They taped together a sign like a table tent. So we set out to design a big table tent that is the length of a salad bar or about 3 feet long. And Goleta School District wanted a rainbow salad. So we worked on a 3 foot salad.
The real salad was indeed 3 feet long. But you can’t take a great closeup photo of a 3 foot long salad so we took multiple shots and hand-stitched them together for the best results. This salad, in our Photoshop file, was over 300 inches long. It took up hundreds of meg on our computer. It had to be right-sized and then set into the poster:
