Nutrition 101

I am just days away from completing my first graduate-level course in nutrition. Throughout the semester, "Nutrition for a Healthy Lifestyle" reminded me just how complex the human body is, and how important it is we nourish it with the right foods. I've still got lots to learn, but the overview -- from antioxidants to zinc -- will serve as a solid foundation for understanding what we eat and why we eat it. Now that I'll be spending less time pouring over my textbook, I hope to share more ruminations about nutrition for kids on this blog. But after all the tests, and all the lectures, the most important take-away message is something I've known at heart all along: eat fresh; eat balanced; eat variety.

As a final project, I developed an informal website for kids: "Eating the Alphabet: the kids' guide to the WHY of nutrition". If your kids are tired of being scolded to...

"Eat your carrots!"
"Finish your milk!" and
"Don't eat those cookies!"

...and would like to learn why they should -- or shouldn't -- eat those goodies, this site is for them. It's a work in progress, but kids will learn about protein and carbs, iron and vitamins. Also, you'll find lots of links to other resources on kids' nutrition, including KidsHealth and MyPyramid for Kids.