myplate Archives - Wild Blueberries

Build A Healthy Plate

MyPlate Takes Its Healthy Eating Message Viral

MyPlate is on a mission. This colorful little icon – the visual reminder that each meal we eat should include food groups in designated portions – is looking to turn our less-than-healthy plates into vibrant, healthful ones – in short, to help us “Build a Healthy Plate”. If your plate has been looking a little behind the times when it comes to health – maybe it’s missing a variety of colors, or maybe it’s light in the fruit and vegetable department, or maybe it’s become too comfortable holding all those fats, salts and sugars – don’t beat yourself up. It happens. It just means that the “Build A Healthy Plate” message is perfect for you.

We know why we want to build a healthy plate – who wouldn’t be on board with fighting obesity, diabetes, and heart disease just by enhancing, modifying, or adding to our plate at mealtimes. But how can we excel in doing it? According to Choosemyplate.gov, it’s simple if you follow these steps to healthy plate-building:

Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.
Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk (dairy).
Make at least half your grains whole.
Compare sodium, sugars, and saturated fats in foods and choose the foods with lower numbers.

Of course, you can just use the MyPlate icon as the centerpiece of healthy eating. By following the USDA Dietary Guidelines for portion size and food groups, you can start balancing calories, increasing what you need more of (like fruits and vegetables) and decreasing what you don’t (like sodium and sugary drinks). Then, voilà – you’ve built a healthy plate. And if you build it, health will come.

Need Healthy Plate Tips? You Got ‘Em!

One way to keep your eyes on the health prize and Build a Healthy Plate is to take advantage of the MyPlate Ten Tips Nutrition Education Series. As part of the “ten tips” effort, easy-to-follow tips become everyday reminders by providing convenient, printable tip sheets that are perfect for the fridge. That way, if it’s not on your mind, it will be in your sight line. If you want to add more fruit to your day, pop this Focus on Fruit tip sheet up on the fridge. It will remind you that you can get a more fruit-full plate by using frozen fruit, for instance, and not missing a serving at breakfast.

You can download other tip sheets at ChooseMyPlate.gov including tips for choosing more kid-friendly fruits and veggies and tips for eating better on a budget.

Pinning a Healthy Plate

MyPlate is going social. The healthy eating blitz includes collaboration with Let’s Move!, the initiative launched by Michelle Obama to solve the challenge of childhood obesity. MyPlate and Let’s Move! are coming together on the MyPlate Recipes Pinterest page which highlights healthy recipes from all over the digital world. The over 1,000 recipes pinned have been identified as nutritious meals that are easy for families to make in the real world. The goal? To make healthy recipes accessible to everyone. “We have to meet home cooks where they are,” said Larry Soler, CEO of Partnership For A Healthier America. “And millions of them visit our partner sites as well as Pinterest every month.” Dishes from sites like CookingLight.com, Epicurious.com, RealSimple.com, and Delish.com have made the healthy cut and appear on the recipes board. No wonder the board is being called a one-stop-shop where parents, beginner home cooks and even the most experienced chefs can find and share healthier recipes.

Read Michelle Obama Pairs with Pinterest to Highlight Healthy Recipes, and start perusing healthy pins, or visit the Wild Blueberries Pinterest page for healthy, antioxidant-rich pin-spiration!

Give Your Plate a MyPlate Makeover!

Maybe your plate needs a fresh new start, or maybe you’ve been wearing the same plate since high school. It’s time for a MyPlate makeover! Have you got a before and after photo of your made-over plate? Did you find a healthy plate or lower calorie plate while you were at a restaurant? Maybe you spied a fruit bowl instead of a dozen donuts at your workplace – that’s a made-over plate! Give it props by sharing your made-over plate with us or telling us about it on Facebook.

MyPlate is on Facebook. Become a fan of their page and be among the first to hear about new MyPlate resources, materials, and tips for healthy eating at the MyPlate Facebook page.

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.

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Celebrate Your Plate

March 8th is “What’s on MyPlate?” Day

You know a small nutritional change – something as simple as eating an extra serving or two of fruits and vegetables every day – can add up to major shifts in health, weight, and disease prevention. If you’ve been working on those tweaks, additions, and replacements every day in an effort to move more and more toward a better food plate, then good for you. In fact, “What’s on MyPlate?” Day is just for you.

It’s All on Your Plate

Little changes are no small thing. Paying attention to the principles of a superior plate can be ground-breaking for us as individuals and as a culture. That’s why this Thursday, March 8, Wild About Health is joining its community members in celebrating “What’s on MyPlate?” day. The celebration is intended to hang a little crepe in recognition of our healthy eating behaviors and to help spread the word about our successes.

You know MyPlate as the new food pyramid – or plate – that helps consumers fill their plates with the right foods and focus on smaller portions. By using the colorful plate as a guideline for every meal, MyPlate gives us a visual cue that helps us modify our eating behaviors for the better.

Enjoy a Little More, Eat a Little Less

So what’s behind “What’s on MyPlate?” day? It is intended to put the focus on enjoying our food – but enjoying less of it. After all, we are tied to our plates for our sustenance and nutrition, so enjoying the food on them is essential. Enjoying our plate can include eating mindfully, or paying more attention to the foods we love, as well as to the hunger cues that tell us when we’re full. It can also mean keeping those special treats we love in our life, but thinking of them as special rather than regular indulgences.

As part of enjoying your food in a better way, you might be choosing to increase your intake of fruits like antioxidant-rich wild blueberries, for instance, or eating more leafy greens. You might be trading in your soda for water or another lower-calorie beverage. You might be keeping track of your eating by using tools like Supertracker, a food database and diet and exercise tracker to help keep you going down the right road. If you are making any of these small changes, or you aspire to, you’re ready to celebrate. (Reconcile your changes for the better with this nutritional tip sheet.)

How to Celebrate “What’s On MyPlate Day?”

If you haven’t climbed on the MyPlate bandwagon, now is the time to start. Proponents of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest the following: First, on Thursday, start paying special attention to your food – consider “What’s on MyPlate?” during each meal that day.

Second, celebrate your shifts to a better plate by sharing them. Telling your story means you’re part of the swell of good nutritional karma. It reinforces your efforts to be healthy and encourages others to do the same. Here’s how to start sharing:

Blog about it. Got a platform? Tell your story, and share photos of your successes. Let your readers know how important it is to you to pay attention to your plate every day. Tell them how MyPlate guidelines have helped you construct your meals, and share your own tips and insights.

Tweet about it. Use the hash-tag #MyPlateYourPlate to tell your tweeps how you are enjoying food and eating less, and ask them just what’s up with their plate.

Share your plates. Put the MyPlate movement into action by taking photos of healthful plates worth sharing, and use the hash-tag #MyPlate to post them at USDA’s Flickr Photo Group.

Make a video. Get together with your community and show the world how important a great plate is. Communities on the Move Video Challenge invites organizations that work with children to create short videos that highlight their efforts to reverse the trend of childhood obesity.

Tell us. Share your stories with Wild About Health. We want to know how you’ve changed your plate in an effort to maintain your health, enjoy your food more, and eat less. We’ll share photos of your plates, and news of your successes and challenges to help further the discussion of good health, nutrition, and disease prevention.

Celebrate your plate March 8th—and celebrate YOU!