More Than Meatless

How many of your clients or students say they follow a vegetarian or plant-based eating pattern – and think they’re eating healthfully – when in reality, they’re just consuming lots of non-meat processed foods?

Healthy plant-based and vegetarian eating patterns are about more than opting for the Impossible Burger with fries. To be healthy, this way of eating has to be centered on a variety of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains.

Teach your clients or students everything they need to know with our Vegetarian and Plant-Based Diet for Better Health PowerPoint show.

Who needs this presentation?

  • Students, from middle school through college, especially if they’ve decided to be vegetarian.
  • Adults, especially those who are newly diagnosed or hoping to prevent diet-related chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.
  • Anyone who wants to eat more plants or try more meatless meals.

Items in our Plant-Based theme go well with the Vegetarian and Plant-Based Diet for Better Health PowerPoint show. You could put up posters (like the Plant Slant) or a bulletin board display featuring plant-based recipes that people can take with them (or they can take a picture with their cell phone).

By Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

A Big Thanks to School Lunch

National School Lunch Week might be celebrated October 10-14, but we think the dedicated people who feed America’s students deserve recognition every day.

The future of our country counts on kids growing up eating healthy meals, including school breakfast and lunch. Let school foodservice employees know how important they are, any time of the year.

Here are some ideas:

  • Students can:
    1. Create their own school lunch or breakfast posters (make it a contest or just a fun activity).
    2. Sign a giant thank you card and present it to foodservice staff.
    3. Write notes about or draw pictures of their favorite school meals.
    4. Give foodservice staff a big smile and say thank you!
  • You can:
    1. Take pictures of smiling students eating their school lunch or breakfast and post them in the cafeteria and/or kitchen.
    2. Encourage parents and teachers to write thank you notes to foodservice staff.
    3. Brighten up kitchens and cafeterias with salad bar clings and posters, like these:

By Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

Take a Swing at Healthy Cooking

With Major League Baseball playoffs coming up next month, join in the excitement by encouraging your students, clients, or employees to take a swing at cooking healthy meals.

Our Home Run Cooking book with leader guide and PowerPoint shows will make you a hit with any audience. Even cooking demo rookies will be ready to step up to the plate with help from the Professional Cooking Demo Guide.

Whether you hold a one-time cooking demo, offer a class series, or record a cooking webinar, Home Run Cooking covers all the bases. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

  • Batter On Deck: Start simple with a series covering the basics – setting up your kitchen, stocking your pantry, knife skills, food and kitchen safety, and different cooking methods.
  • Base Hit: Focus on one meal and run with it. Show your audience the many ways to get on base with a healthy breakfast, for example.
  • Fielder’s Choice: Add to your cooking demos with health and nutrition lessons, cost-cutting tips, a supermarket tour – whatever works for you.
  • Double Play: After you show your audience how easy it is to prepare healthy meals, send them home with their own Home Run Cooking Book or copies of recipes and handouts.
  • Perfect Game: Use the 50-slide PowerPoint show full of beautiful photos of easy-to-prepare meals to encourage everyone to take a swing at healthy cooking.

Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

Habit Wheel Keeps on Rolling

Get the school year off to a healthy start with the Healthy Habit Wheel!

The Healthy Habit Wheel poster features four healthy habits for each category: Healthy Lifestyle, Healthy Food & Drink, and Exercise. While the poster is geared to students, the habits apply to adults as well.

Here are some teaching tips to go along with the Healthy Habit Wheel:

  1. The 12 habits make perfect SMART goals. Let students decide how they will track their habits over the course of a week, a month, or a semester.
  2. The wheel concept reflects the idea that you’re never done with making healthy choices. The wheel keeps on turning!
  3. You don’t need to tackle all 12 habits at once. In fact, that would be quite overwhelming! Students can master a habit and move to another one.
  4. Don’t compare yourself to others. Everyone has habits that come easy to them, and everyone has habits they need to work on.
  5. Personalize your Healthy Habit Wheel with other goals that are important to you.

Keep the Healthy Habit Wheel rolling in the right direction, culminating in good health for a lifetime!

Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

Which Side Are You On?

Don’t worry, we’re not talking about anything controversial!

In fact, our Which Side are You On? PowerPoint show will appeal to everyone who wants to eat healthier for any reason.

One side is the typical American diet of fast food and sugary beverages. The other side is a healthier eating pattern filled with nutrient-dense, less-processed foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, and low-fat dairy.

Which Side are You On? uses more than 50 professional photographs of real food to compare the two sides.

This is a great way to do nutrition education for visual learners, people with low literacy, or any audience you want to impress. They will appreciate the picture comparisons and the messages will be easy to remember.

Use Which Side are You On? to teach:

  • Older adults at a senior center or retirement community.
  • Parents of young children (maybe for parent’s night at a child care center or elementary school).
  • Middle, high school, or college students or student-athletes.

Bonus – it’s only about 20 minutes long, leaving you plenty of time for Q&A or a cooking demo!

There’s also a Which Side are You On? poster. The poster and the PowerPoint come with our Fast and Lean Meal Planner Handout, which will help your audience start choosing the healthy side for all their meals right away.

Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD

Ride on the Healthy Habit Wheel

We all know that healthy students are better learners. Healthy habits continue to pay off over the long term as kids grow up.

Our new Healthy Habit Wheel poster features habits in three categories — lifestyle, diet, and exercise — all centered on the Dietary Guidelines and the Physical Activity Guidelines. 

Here are some ways to use the Healthy Habit Wheel with students in the classroom:

  1. Healthy Habit of the Week: The class works on one habit per week. Start the week off with a brainstorm session on how to achieve the habit. End the week with students reporting on how they did.
  2. Healthy Habit Thought Box: On a slip of paper, students write a sentence or two telling how they practiced a healthy habit (like drinking water at lunch instead of soda), then put it in a special box or basket. When the teacher has a few extra minutes during the day, they can pull out some entries to share with the class.
  3. Healthy Habit Inventory: Have students check off the habits they already do. Then they can design their own wheel with the habits they need to work on. 
  4. Healthy Habit Journal: Students have a special notebook or document where they write about their journey around the Healthy Habit Wheel.
  5. Healthy Habit Expo: Break students up into small groups. Each group researches a habit, then presents their findings to the rest of the class. 

Hollis Bass, MEd, RD, LD