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| National Nutrition Week:
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| Try for 5
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It's National Nutrition Week (16-22 October) and with increasing concerns about the rise of obesity in early childhood, there is also increasing appreciation of the potential role of early childhood education and care providers in teaching children about healthy eating and why it is important.
Each year National Nutrition Week raises awareness of the role of food in our health and wellbeing, and supports the community to enjoy healthy eating. According to Nutrition Australia, we should all be eating at least five serves of vegetables every day, but the average Australian eats only half that amount. The goal of this year's Nutrition Week is 'Try for Five' and it encourages Aussies to be more mindful about the number of veggies they are eating and make a deliberate effort to eat more.
Childhood obesity rates are around 25 per cent and Nutrition Australia says that encouraging children to eat their five serves of vegetables each day, be they frozen, canned or fresh, is one of the cheapest, tastiest and most effective ways to promote better health and wellbeing among children.
To encourage early childhood settings to include more vegetables and plant based foods in their menus Nutrition Australia have put together a host of colourful resources to promote the benefits and offer a number of suggestions including:
Eat a rainbow:
Offer a different range of colourful vegetables everyday to maximise the nutritional benefits and to take advantage of the great variety, textures and tastes of vegetables (remember they can be chopped, sliced, eaten whole, cooked al dente, mashed, baked or roasted).
Try new stuff:
In Nutrition Week offer the children a different vegetable every day, or try a new method of cooking the vegetables you have on hand. It's easy to get stuck in a routine, but switching things up a bit makes the experience of eating veggies fun and interesting.
Love your legumes:
2016 is International Year of the Pulse this amazingly versatile food group is a good source of protein and fibre and also offers a range of other important nutritional benefits. Even better pulses and legumes are cheap, plentiful and delicious, perfect for early childhood settings.
Nutrition Australia has put together a list of ideas for early childhood services wanting to take an active role in National Nutrition Week:
- Register a team in the Try For 5 challenge
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Print and display
National Nutrition Week posters
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Have the children make a poster of the rainbow, then draw vegetables in the colour of the rainbow that they match (e.g. carrots in the orange section, capsicums in the red section). Discuss how we should eat a rainbow every day because it is tasty, colourful, fun, and gives us nutrients from lots of different vegetables.
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Host a blind taste test of different vegetables and ask students to describe each one using their five senses: taste, touch, smell, sight and sound.
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Read fun picture storybooks to promote vegetables and healthy eating to young children. See Nutrition Australia's range of books for sale online or from NAQ Nutrition.
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Start a veggie patch or plant new vegetables in your current garden bed.
- Discuss a different vegetable each day and the different ways you could cook and eat that vegetable. Better yet, actually cook them and discuss the tastes, textures, colours and how they grow and where they come from.
- Host a 'healthy sandwich day' where the sandwich/wrap ingredients are in a centre table and children can add whatever they want as long as they have 3 different coloured vegetables.
- Ask children to create their own Try For 5 tracker to keep at home. It could count 5 serves of vegetables a day, or 5 different types of vegetables a day, or 5 different coloured vegetables a day.
- Ask children to think of ways to include vegetables in every meal of the day: breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner (add drinks and desserts if you’re game!). Challenge them to think outside the box and to be a bit whacky. You could even cook some of their suggestions in class and discuss which ideas work and which don't.
- Have the children create signs and posters to promote the vegetable options.
- Don't forget the parents! Include a veggie recipe or some healthy eating tips in your newsletter, early childhood setting website or social media.
- Be excellent role models and make sure children see their educators enjoying veggies too!
- Check out Nutrition Australia's recipes and resources section for ideas and resources to use with the students.
- View Nutrition Australia's range of nutrition education resources for lots of other useful information.
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