Compassionate Health Messages

Do you see your students, clients, or employees struggling in these post-pandemic days? Or perhaps you are stressed out yourself trying to get back to ‘normal.’

As healthcare professionals, we’re quick to point out how healthy eating and regular physical activity can help. We want to share all our knowledge. But for some folks, this isn’t the help they need right now.

The nurse who’s exhausted, the teacher who’s overwhelmed, the older adult who’s lonely, the teenager who’s anxious – they need our compassion, shown through messages like those depicted on our I Am… motivational poster.

Messages that emphasize that health and well-being is a journey. Every step you take counts, even those you take backwards!

The I Am… motivational poster gives gentle reminders that may resonate more with your students, clients, or employees:

  1. Self-care (sleeping enough, forgiving a setback)
  2. Healthy eating (eating mindfully when hungry, loving fruits & veggies)
  3. Physical activity (moving more, exercising consistently)
  4. Hope and positivity (not giving up)
  5. Intention (planning and working to success)

Don’t forget to be compassionate with yourself, too!

By Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

 

The Art of Advertising Healthy Food

Are you looking for a beautiful way to advertise healthy, fresh food? Our food art posters are the answer!

These one-of-a-kind masterpieces combine professional photography with motivational messages that will make you want to drop everything and go to the nearest fresh produce market.

Here are a few of my current favorites:

  1. Shine a Light on Veggies features a stunning still-life of asparagus spears. Asparagus is in season in many parts of the country, so what better time to increase its exposure with this gorgeous poster?
  2. Brighten Your Basket reminds you to fill your supermarket cart or farmer’s market basket with fresh produce like those pictured: onions, avocados, Meyer lemons, radishes, and baby bok choy.
  3. Bring the Farm to Your Table says it all with a beautiful display of fresh baby carrots, beets, potatoes, chard, and asparagus.
  4. Nature’s Fast Food’s juicy peaches and bright red cherries will have your mouth watering for these summer tree fruits!
  5. Grown, Not Processed is the ultimate advertisement for choosing a variety of colorful, fresh fruits and veggies. It promotes beets, garlic, peaches, fennel, radishes, carrots, greens (kale, lettuce, parsley), portabella mushrooms, and oyster mushrooms.

Framing these food art posters will give your office or waiting room an upscale feeling. But they’re also affordable enough to be used (framed or unframed) in cafeterias, hallways, and classrooms.

By Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

Show Off Fruits & Veggies

‘Tis the season for fresh fruits and vegetables and we have a beautiful new poster that shows them off. Take a look at the I Heart Fruits & Veggies poster:

Here are some ways to use this bright, eye-catching poster in your nutrition and health education:

  • With younger children:
    • Ask questions…
      • What colors do you see?
      • Can you count the fruits and veggies?
      • Can you name them?
      • Which ones do you eat?
      • Which ones have you never tried before?
    • Do a hands-on activity with a fruit or veggie that’s in season: look, touch, smell, taste.
    • Have a fruit & vegetable story time: here are some children’s book suggestions from University of Nevada Extension.
  • With teens and adults:
    • Ask questions…
      • How many of these fruits/veggies can you name?
      • Which ones have you tried?
      • Which ones do you like?
      • How do you prepare them?
      • Are there any that you’ve never tried?
      • Any you’ve never seen?
  • Alongside these nutrition education topics and activities:

By Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

Focus on Fruit

The holiday season’s bright colors fade away in January when the reality of winter sets in. Plan now to cheer up those cold, dreary days with our beautiful Focus on Fruit poster.

Focusing on fruit means adding color, flavor, fiber, nutrients, and a little sweetness to meals and snacks. Here are some ideas to help your students or clients Focus on Fruit — use them for social media, classes, or individual counseling:

  • Peel something new … try different citrus fruits every week. Introduce your family to tangerines, blood oranges, kumquats (don’t peel them!), cara cara oranges, and satsumas.
  • Bake up some comfort … make warm, healthy desserts like baked apples or pears with cinnamon.
  • Keep cans on hand … create winter fruit salads using canned fruit like peaches, pears, and mandarin oranges.
  • Toss in some color … experiment with adding frozen berries to your oatmeal – what’s your favorite combination?
  • Say aloha to smoothies … bring the tropics into your kitchen by making fruit smoothies with frozen papaya, mango, or pineapple.

Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

Strategies for Better Sleep

Who doesn’t want to get a better night’s sleep? Between screen time, busy days, crazy schedules, nightly worries, and unhealthful eating, getting a good night’s sleep can be tougher than we think!

But help is on the way!

Here’s a new tool to help your clients get more high-quality sleep: the Diet and Sleep Poster!

This poster comes at sleep from a bunch of different angles, so you’re sure to find a way that will appeal to your audience. Take a look and see for yourself!

This poster covers:

  • The myriad of health benefits of sleep
  • Ways to improve the quality of nightly sleep
  • Strategies to prioritize enough sleep
  • Sneaky things that undermine efforts to get better sleep

You can save 15% off of this poster or any other item in the Nutrition Education Store with the code FALLSAVE15, but hurry! This offer won’t last long!

Diabetes & Fear

When talking about diabetes, it’s tempting to spout statistics. The numbers are scary, but will hearing scary statistics over and over cause the average American to take action so that they don’t become a statistic? Or will it overwhelm and scare them into not doing anything at all?

Of course, it’s important to get the message out there about diabetes. But maybe we can do a better job of helping some people by addressing this disease in a less intimidating way. Our new Type 2 Diabetes Risk Poster and matching tearpad can help you do just that. It’s very straightforward, providing:

  • A checklist of risk factors.
  • A chart with blood glucose/A1C levels for normal, prediabetes, and diabetes.
  • Three steps to prevent diabetes.
  • A statement about how high blood sugar can damage the body.

This information is basic but should spark people’s interest enough to get them to consider what step they need to take, whether it’s getting a blood glucose test or talking to their doctor or dietitian.

You could also use the information on this poster as the basis for a short class, group chat, or Facebook Live session discussing these three questions:

  1. Are you at risk of developing diabetes? How many of your risk factors are in your power to change?
  2. Do you know your blood glucose numbers (A1C, fasting, glucose tolerance test)? More importantly, do you know what they mean?
  3. What are you willing to do to prevent diabetes? Consider changes to your diet and exercise routine and modest weight loss.

You can follow up on the discussion with time for Q&A. Or simply ask participants to submit their questions, to be answered in a future session.

Be sure to end with a call to action. Ask participants to write down 1-3 things they will do based on what they’ve learned. Will they make an appointment to find out their glucose numbers? Take a walk after dinner every night? Calculate 5-7 percent of their body weight and use this number as a weight loss goal?

Above all, encourage folks to visit their doctor and get a blood glucose/A1C test – even if they’re afraid to learn that they have diabetes. Remind them that knowledge is power, and power is better than fear!

Be Carb Smart

Americans love to hate carbohydrates. If cutting carbs means avoiding foods like white bread, big bagels, and sugary cereals, go for it. If it means you’re afraid to eat a banana or drink low-fat milk, we need to talk!

It’s our job to teach people two things about carbs. First, that carbs are the body’s main source of energy, so you can’t do without them. And second, that all carbs are not equal when it comes to calories, fiber, and important nutrients. Our Be Carb Smart PowerPoint, poster, and color handout can help you set the record straight.

Here are some teaching tips to help people Be Carb Smart:

  1. Fiber is key. A high fiber diet helps reduce your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and colon cancer. Fiber also makes you feel full (so you’ll eat less), and helps control blood sugar and cholesterol. Guess which foods provide fiber? Carbs! Be smart – don’t cut out carbs that provide healthy fiber.
  2. Some carbs are high in calories, low in fiber, and low in nutrients. We call these calorie-dense carbs. Examples are French fries, cookies, crackers, and pretzels. These are the carbs you want to cut.
  3. Some carbs are lower in calories, higher in fiber, and high in nutrients. We call these calorie-light carbs. Examples are vegetables, fruits, hot cereals, brown rice, and beans. (Low-fat and skim milk count, too, although they don’t provide fiber.) These are the carbs you want to include in your diet.
  4. MyPlate makes it easy to be carb smart: If you fill your plate with half fruits and vegetables (especially non-starchy veggies), one quarter whole grains, and one quarter protein, you’ll automatically get more calorie-light carbs, plenty of fiber, and other important nutrients.
  5. Be smart about fruit. Fresh, whole fruit is your best bet. Frozen and canned fruit without added sugar is also a good choice. Look for fruit canned in water or fruit juice. Limit dried fruit and fruit juice – both are higher in calories than other forms of fruit.
  6. Be smart about veggies. Starchy vegetables like potatoes and sweet potatoes are higher in calories than non-starchy veggies like broccoli, tomatoes, and spinach. But they are still calorie-light carbs — unless they’re fried. Fried potatoes (calorie-dense carbs) have 1400 calories per pound, while baked potatoes (calorie-light carbs) have about 500 calories per pound.
  7. Be smart about grains. Less processed is best — so choose more whole grains, like brown rice, whole-wheat pasta, oats, and barley. Whole grain bread is fine, but don’t use it as your grain for every meal. Try to mix it up to get more variety.

Carbs get a bad rap. We can restore their reputation by helping folks learn to be carb smart!

 

 

Prediabetes = Preventdiabetes

“Prediabetes = Preventdiabetes” – this phrase on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website says it all. A diagnosis of prediabetes is serious, but you CAN take steps to prevent or delay the progression to diabetes.

Use our Prediabetes Poster and Prediabetes Color Handout Tearpad to get these important messages out:

  • What is prediabetes? If your blood sugar is higher than normal, but not high enough to be classified as type 2 diabetes, you have prediabetes.
  • Who has prediabetes? One in three U.S. adults has prediabetes. The CDC says that 90 percent don’t know they have it.
  • How does prediabetes affect me? It can lead to type 2 diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. Over time, uncontrolled high blood sugar can cause kidney, nerve, and eye damage.
  • What can I do? Research shows that doing just two things can help you prevent or delay type 2 diabetes: Lose 5-7 percent of your body weight (10-14 pounds for someone who weighs 200 pounds) and get at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week, such as brisk walking.

MyPlate Goes Anywhere

Did you know that 90 percent of adults don’t eat the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables?* Maybe if we saw MyPlate billboards as often as we see signs for fast food or soda, this number wouldn’t be so high. Since that’s not going to happen, it’s up to us to plant the MyPlate image into everyone’s minds.

The MyPlate Start Simple poster is a great discussion-starter for helping people find simple ways to fill half of their plate with fruits and veggies, whether they’re eating at home, at a restaurant, at work, or at school.

  • At home – this should be the easiest because you’re in charge. Keep lots of fruits and veggies on hand to fill up half of your plate. Bags of pre-washed baby spinach and spring mix make it easy to fix a salad every day. Stock your freezer with a variety of frozen vegetables to steam, microwave, or roast in the oven.
  • At restaurants – you don’t have as much control, but checking out the menu online ahead of time can help. Look for vegetable sides and order an extra serving. If you’re getting subs or burritos, visually deconstruct them to see how they would look on a plate, then decide if you need to add an extra veggie or fruit, choose a salad instead of sandwich, or go easy on the rice.
  • Packing lunch – keep that plate in mind as you put your lunch together. Pile all the veggies you can onto sandwiches. Add sides of raw veggies like baby carrots and cherry tomatoes, and a piece of fruit. Or pack lunch the easy way – leftovers from a MyPlate-friendly dinner make the perfect MyPlate lunch.

*Source: CDC (read more here).

Use this link to get 15% off all MyPlate Teaching Resources – this week only! Good through April 13, 2019

Two Tools to Keep it Simple

Your clients are busy. They hear conflicting nutrition advice every day. When it’s time to shop for food, they’re overwhelmed by thousands of choices at the supermarket. But we know healthy eating doesn’t have to be so complicated. That’s why we’re excited about the new MyPlate campaign and theme coming in 2020 with the new Dietary Guidelines – Start Simple with MyPlate.

Keeping things simple is what we had in mind when we created our new Two Tools poster. Healthy eating is simple when you use the Dynamic Duo of MyPlate and the Nutrition Facts label.

Here are five lessons taught by the Two Tools: MyPlate and Nutrition Facts Label poster:

  1. Use MyPlate as a guide when shopping for food and you’ll take home the building blocks for healthy meals.
  2. You know you’re on the right track when half of your shopping cart is filled with fruits and vegetables and half is filled with whole grains and lean protein. And don’t forget some low-fat dairy!
  3. Beware of misleading claims on the front of food packages.
  4. Check the Nutrition Facts label for the information you need to make the healthy choice. Look at calories, portion size, saturated fat, sodium, added sugars, and fiber.
  5. With MyPlate and the Nutrition Facts label, it’s simple to build a more balanced eating pattern that will promote good health.