March is National Nutrition Month

Ready to Get Personal About Your Food Choices?

This month, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics wants you to get personal about your food choices. Why? Because they say knowing and embracing your individual food style and preferences is one of the best ways to eat a healthy diet and make good food choices over the long term. In short, they think our favorite foods – foods we like and feel excited and satisfied by – should be a part of our life.

Can we can really be healthy and still celebrate our diverse food preferences? The experts behind National Nutrition Month® say we can. National Nutrition Month® is a nutrition education and information campaign created annually in March by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, an organization of food and nutrition professionals. This year marks the 40th anniversary of National Nutrition Month®, and Eat Right, Your Way, Every Day is this year’s theme. The theme provides a positive platform to think about eating in terms of individual choices – our traditions, our lifestyle, and our likes and dislikes. While the emphasis of National Nutrition Month® is on portion size and moderation as part of a healthy eating plan, this year’s theme also focuses on the idea that eating healthily doesn’t mean giving up foods that we love, foods that we grew up with, or foods that are part of our culture or lifestyle.

For example, rather than making our traditional Italian pasta dishes or Southern specialties off-limits, modifying or moderating our portions of these beloved foods can put us on the road to a healthy diet, as long as we follow the principles of good eating outlined by the USDA’s MyPlate recommendations – filling half our plate with fruits and vegetables and understanding the food groups and portions that make up a healthy diet. Whether we are athletes or mothers, vegans or meat lovers, the idea behind Eat Right, Your Way, Every Day is that eating what suits us personally can help us eat well.

Learn more about principles of National Nutrition Month® and Build a Personalized Eating Plan, or visit EatRight.org for a variety of tips, games, and educational resources designed to spread the message of good nutrition.

Be Part of the Conversation About Healthy Eating

What are your personal eating habits?

We all balance our lifestyle, traditions, and health needs in different ways. Who we are and how we live dictates what we choose to put on our plates every day. Be part of the conversion about how you eat and live – write about it on your own food blog and be listed on the National Nutritional Month® Blogroll. Or, let us know by commenting or sending us an email. We want to hear your insights during the month of March. Then, we’ll share your answers or your posts with our readers.

Use these questions as a guide:

• How is your family or cultural tradition part of your everyday eating?
• What parts of your lifestyle dictate what you eat? Are you away from home a lot? Do you care for other family members?
• What part of your food choices are dictated by what you love to eat?
• What personal food choices do you feel good about? Not so good about?

Celebrate your individuality this month! Make your food choices healthy ones by putting something you love on your plate. Then share the love by being part of conversation about healthy eating.

Have You Entered to Win a Wild Taste Adventure?

You’ll have a chance to win Five Days of Food and Fun in the Land of Wild Blueberries, a getaway which includes transportation for two to Québec City, Canada, 4 nights lodging in the historic Château Frontenac, and a $1,000 Wild Taste dining allowance to enjoy the Wild Blueberry specialties in top restaurants around the city! Just enter for a chance win this Wild Taste Adventure!