Be SMART About Goals

Behavior change is tough. It’s uncomfortable. Staying in our comfort zones is easy and feels safer.

But, like it says on our Comfort Zone poster, the comfort zone might be a beautiful place … but nothing changes there!

Help your clients or students get off the comfy couch and on track for a healthier life by teaching them about SMART goals. Here are some ideas to get started:

  • SMART goals are Specific: keep them small and simple.
    • Eat at least one vegetable for lunch every day.
    • Meditate for one minute while your coffee is brewing.
  • SMART goals are Measurable: you can’t change what you don’t measure.
    • Keep track of your progress with an app on your phone, a calendar, or a pen-and-paper log.
  • SMART goals are Attainable: that’s why making them small and simple is such a good idea.
    • Remember, small changes add up over time!
  • SMART goals are Relevant: set goals that mean something to you.
    • Do yoga because you want to be able to play on the floor with your grandchildren.
    • Walk daily because you want to hike with your family on an upcoming vacation.
  • SMART goals are Time-Bound: decide when your goal will be completed so you can celebrate your success.
    • Eat fruit at breakfast every day for one week.
    • Take a walk after dinner three times per week for one month.

New Year’s resolutions will be here before we know it. SMART goals give your students or clients a chance to keep those resolutions for a change!

By Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

Free Handout: SMART Goals

MyPlate Coloring Page

Today is your lucky day!

To celebrate the release of the brand-new MyPlate Coloring Book, I want to share a page from that book with you, for free!

You see, coloring isn’t just for kids anymore. Emerging studies indicate that coloring could help reduce stress in adults as well as children. Plus, it’s just plain fun!

Of course, I couldn’t leave things there. As soon as I learned about the possible health benefits of coloring, I began to brainstorm ways to sneak a few lessons about wellness and healthy eating patterns into my coloring pages. Before I knew it, the MyPlate Coloring Book was born. With patterns intricate enough to be fun to color, and an added dash of simple and memorable health lessons on each page, this book is sure to be fun for all ages!

And now, without further ado, here is the free page from the MyPlate coloring book! How will you use your copy?

MyPlate Coloring Page

Remember, there’s always more in the Nutrition Education Store! Check out these fantastic MyPlate resources…

My Plate Coloring Book

MyPlate PowerPoint and Handout Set

My Plate Banner and Stand

Behind the Scenes: New Cooking and Prediabetes Posters

Hey, do you remember that Chop Test article you saw a while back? How about that Prediabetes Guide?

If you do, then you’re not alone. Lots of people reached out and told me that those were two of their favorite posts. So many, in fact, that I decided to take those posts to the next level and turn them into nutrition education materials.

The Chop Test offers a simple and memorable guide to cooking with vegetables, so I decided that the key points would make a marvelous poster that could be hung in a commercial kitchen, posted in a health fair booth, propped up for a cooking demonstration, or incorporated into a nutrition display.

This guide to properly preparing vegetables is as versatile as it is useful. With a simple test to tell which kind of vegetable is best for which cooking style, this bright and informative poster will help your audience gain kitchen confidence while introducing new vegetables into their eating plans.

Will this poster make your life easier? Learn more about it!

Now let’s change gears and take a closer look at the new Prediabetes poster.

The statistics on prediabetes are astounding. My hope is that we can help our practitioners help people avoid diabetes entirely — heading it off before prediabetes turns into full-blown diabetes. This poster offers an excellent screening tool that is done in an engaging infographic style. With information on what prediabetes is, how it affects the body, what symptoms it displays, and what the average consumer can do to reduce his or her risk of prediabetes (or treat the condition itself), this poster offers a bright and simple way to educate your audience. Throw it in a display, use it to pep up a shared space, add it to a wellness fair booth, or hang it in your office — it will be a great educational resource for whatever you need.

This poster uses colorful graphics, simple sentences, and clear diagrams to appeal to a wide range of learning styles, promoting participant engagement while boosting information retention. It draws its information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Diabetes Association (ADA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), so you know that the research that backs it is supported by the latest peer-reviewed science.

Intrigued by this poster? Get the details today!

And, because I love ya, I want to share the handout that accompanies the Chop Test poster. Here it is, in all it’s glory! Download the free PDF today!

Chop Test Handout

We’re here to help you look your very best, right now! So which resource will make your life easier?

Nutrition Bootcamp: PowerPoint and Handout Set

Chop Test Poster

Elementary Nutrition Workbook

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

Got Chickens?

Backyard poultry —cute little chicks and ducklings—are becoming popular with both rural and urban families.  This can be an educational opportunity for families as well as a way to have fresh eggs.

But, backyard poultry has been recently been linked to illnesses.  Over 1000 people in several states have become infected with different strains of Salmonella. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at least 175 people have been hospitalized and two people have died.  Most of those who are ill are children younger than five years old.  Poultry can carry the bacteria and not appear sick themselves.

The CDC offers these recommendations to those who have backyard flocks: 

  • Wash your hands with soap and water right after touching backyard poultry and adults should supervise hand-washing by young children if they come in contact with the chickens and chicken equipment.
  • Children under five (and adults over 65 and those with chronic illnesses) should avoid handling chicks, ducklings or other poultry because their bodies may not have the ability to resist infection.
  • Children should not be allowed to play or eat in areas where the poultry roam.
  • Keep other household pets away from the chicken area—they may carry the bacteria to the family and home.
  • Don’t kiss or snuggle backyard poultry.
  • Keep chickens out of the garden. Fresh chicken droppings can be a risk of contamination to fresh produce.
  • Don’t let the poultry in your house.
  • Keep shoes on while working with poultry outside of the house. Remove those shoes before going into the house!
  • Wash the chicken’s equipment outside and not in the kitchen with the people’s food and dishes.

While as cute as can be, take care and be mindful of this potential risk. 

Cheryle Jones Syracuse. MS

Professor Emeritus

https://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/pets/farm-animals/backyard-poultry.html

 

Digital Influencers Lack Food Safety Expertise

“You can’t believe everything you see on the internet.” I think we’ve all said this to clients or classes at one time or another. But we all know that when someone wants a recipe or other information the first thing most people do these days is grab their phone and “Google it”.

But, what about food preservation?  This really isn’t the same as cooking chicken for dinner or finding a cake recipe. Preserving foods safely requires the following research-based practices.  The two most respected resources for food preservation are the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Guide to Home Canning https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html  and the National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP) https://nchfp.uga.edu.

So the question is….do people looking for food preservation recipes on the internet find safe and research-based recipes?

This was the question a group of researchers from the Cooperative Extension, University of Maine asked. According to a news release this group of researchers specifically looked at recipes for home-canned salsa found on popular food blogs. They selected salsa recipes because it is a popular condiment in the United States and found 56 recipes for canning salsa on 43 different food blogs.

They developed a tool to compare the bloggers’ recipes with a known safe recipe for home-canned salsa  https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_salsa/choice_salsa.html  from the NCHFP.  The procedures and results of their study were published in Food Protection Trends Vol 39, No. 5.  http://www.foodprotection.org/publications/food-protection-trends/archive/2019-09-adherence-of-food-blog-salsa-recipes-to-home-canning-guidelines/

A quick summary of what they found: Only four or 7% of all the recipes met all of the researchers’ criteria for safety.

What’s the “take-home message” for us? 

  • Unless you’re a food preservation food scientist, this isn’t the place to be creative and develop your own recipes.
  • Food bloggers could be a great source of safe recipes and a good way to teach—not only food preservation but also food safety in general.
  • The researchers’ recommendations suggest that one thing educators can do is reach out to bloggers (they called them digital food influencers) with information on food preservation and safety and encourage them to recommend USDA and NCHFP resources to their readers and followers to help reduce risk.

Cheryle Jones Syracuse, MS
Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University

 

 

 

Is that a girl pepper?

As educators, it seems like one of our major jobs these days is helping people sort out the truth from the myth and misinformation on the web. Sometimes these articles and memes sound like they might be true and then then next thing you know everyone’s talking about it and then everyone believes it.

Perhaps you’ve seen the one about buying green peppers by their sex. The post reports that peppers with three lobes or bumps on the bottom are male and better for cooking. Female peppers supposedly have four bumps and are full of seeds, sweeter and better for eating raw.

Let’s set the record straight, peppers don’t have genders. When you look into the botany of peppers there is a little truth to the sex thing. Peppers grow from flowers that do have both male and female parts. But the peppers themselves do not.

So, what about the number of lobes on the bottom of the pepper? Like many other things (including people) the shape is determined by weather, growing conditions, and genetics. The number of the bumps don’t give us any clue to the flavor or sweetness of the pepper.

Just like many other fruits and vegetables, the degree of sweetness is generally a factor of the ripeness of the item. So, if you want sweeter peppers, select those that are red, yellow or orange. Yellow and orange peppers are a separate variety. Green peppers will gradually turn red on the plant but not yellow or orange.

When selecting pepper, for the best value, get one that is heavy for its size. As bell peppers ripen, they begin to wrinkle and lose the firmness in their skin. Therefore, avoid dull, shriveled or pitted peppers. Refrigerate peppers in a plastic bag and for best quality use within five days.

Bell peppers are a great source of vitamins A and C and beta-carotene. If your budget will allow, pick the colorful red, orange or yellow peppers. They have more vitamins and beta carotene than their green counterparts. Peppers are fat-free, saturated fat-free, low in sodium, cholesterol-free and low calorie.

Just another case of you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.

Cheryle Jones Syracuse, MS
Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University

Teach Food Safety with Recipes

I’m a strong believer in teaching with recipes. Not only do they instruct how to cook, but they can provide information on nutrition and food safety. When people are preparing meals can be that important teachable moment https://news.nutritioneducationstore.com/teachable-moments/

This approach to teaching is supported by a study published in the Journal of Food Protection .* The study’s author, Sandra Godwin, PhD, RD, from Tennessee State University observed that participants who received recipes with food safety instructions significantly improved their food safety behaviors when given specific food safety instructions in recipes. The study showed that only 20% of people used food thermometers when using recipes WITHOUT safety instructions and 86% used thermometers when given recipes WITH safety instructions.

Looking at making recipes a tool for teaching food safety, the Partnership for Food Safety Education (PFSE) has developed a way to help recipe writers and food editors (and I’m hoping educators, too) incorporate food safety instructions into their recipes. They’ve developed a Safe Recipe Style guide. Check it out at: https://www.saferecipeguide.org/

This website has several drop down menus that include much of what even a food safety novice would need when writing recipes.

The Safe Recipe Style Guide addresses the four major areas of food safety concerns in the home kitchen:

  1. internal cooking temperatures
  2. hand-washing
  3. cross contamination
  4. produce handling

A couple examples from the style guide: “All recipes should start with instructions to wash hands with soap and water because current studies show that a large majority of people do not wash their hands properly – or at all – when handling food.” Or “cover and simmer for 35 to 40 minutes or until cooked through and internal temperature reaches 165 F on food thermometer.”

It really couldn’t be easier now to incorporate some of these food safety ideas into your teaching—be it a newsletter, blog post, recipe demonstration handout, or newspaper column.

Cheryle Jones Syracuse, MS
Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University

*J Food Prot. 2016 Aug;79(8):1436-9, Recipe Modification Improves Food Safety Practices during Cooking of Poultry. Maughan C, Godwin S, Chambers D, Chambers E IV.

Here is a fun example using our chicken stew recipe and the food safety style guide:

Provencal Fennel Chicken Stew

Serves 8 | Serving Size: 1/2 cup
Total Time: 45 min | Prep: 10 min | Cook: 35 min
This recipe is inspired from the Provence of France, located in the Mediterranean

Ingredients:

1 tsp olive oil
3 cloves minced garlic
1/2 cup onion, peeled and diced
1 cup celery, rinsed well and diced
1 tsp ground fennel seeds
3 plum tomatoes, rinsed, cored, seeded, diced
4 cups chicken broth, low or reduced sodium
2 chicken breasts, diced (do not rinse chicken before preparation*)
2 potatoes, rinsed, peeled, and diced
pinch garlic powder
black pepper to taste

Directions:
Food safety prep tips:
  1. Wash your hands with soap and water before starting to prepare your food.
  2. Using a clean cutting board and knife, prepare the vegetables. Follow the guides above for rinsing your veggies well under cool running water. Make sure you get all of the dirt off of the potatoes.
  3. Cut the chicken in chunks and then thoroughly wash and sanitize the knife, cutting board, and any surfaces that came into contact with the raw chicken, including your hands.

Directions:

  1. Saute the olive oil, garlic and onion over medium heat in a large nonstick stockpot or Dutch oven.
  2. Add the celery and fennel and saute briefly until they become translucent.
  3. Add the tomatoes and saute briefly, about one minute.
  4. Add the broth, chicken, potatoes, and seasonings. Cook over medium heat, at a simmer, until the chicken is done and the potatoes are tender, about 20-25 minutes. The chicken is done when it reaches an internal temperature of 165 and when it is white all the way through when cut.
  5. Serve the stew hot with chopped flat leaf parsley.
  6. Refrigerate leftovers promptly in a large shallow pan.
Chef’s Tips:
You can grind the fennel seeds in a coffee grinder or spice grinder.

New Product: Menu Planning Handouts

“When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Truer words were never spoken, especially when it comes to healthy eating! In fact, research shows that planning meals is associated with healthier diets and reduced rates of obesity (1).

Menu planning also helps you:

  • Make a shopping list.
  • Stick to a grocery budget.
  • Eat more meals at home.
  • Get out of the “same old” mealtime rut.
  • Enjoy mealtimes with less stress.

There’s no doubt about it — planning sets clients up for success. Our new Menu Planning Handouts make it easy! Healthy menu items are pictured and listed at the top. Choose from these to fill out the one-week menu planning chart at the bottom.

The Menu Planning Handouts are great for a class or one-on-one counseling. They’re printed on both sides, so clients can do one side as a group or with your help, then use the other side to plan on their own at home.

I like the idea of using the Menu Planning Handout as a menu planner AND a food diary all in one. Clients can use it to plan meals and snacks for the day or the week, then check off what they eat as they go.

Adding the matching dry-erase Menu Planning Poster or Wall Decal makes this the perfect system to help your clients plan to succeed in their healthy eating goals.

  1. Ducrot P, Mejean C, Aroumougame V, et al. Meal planning is associated with food variety, diet quality and body weight status in a large sample of French adults. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2017 Feb 2;14(1):12. DOI: 10.1186/s12966-017-0461-7.