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Healthier Menus Starts with Serving More Raw Fruits and Vegetables

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My childcare center is in the process of becoming a Missouri Eat Smart Child Care Center. Once we are recognized as an Eat smart center, we will receive an Eat Smart Child Care” Banner to place in front of our center.

I am looking forward to receiving the banner, because we have made major improvements to our menus including serving more raw fruits and vegetables at breakfast, lunch and snack. Furthermore, I want parents to know that we serve healthy meals to children at Learning Days.

Serving more raw fruits and vegetables assures that children are consuming fresh whole foods. Moreover, eating more fruits and vegetables means that children will get more phytonutrients that helps to fight disease in the body.

I have enjoyed this process so much, that I have been inspired to create (52) pre-planned healthy menus for childcare facilities. So, be on the look out for those menus!

Here is a sample menu that includes raw fruits and vegetables at each meal:

Breakfast: Pancakes, Blueberries, Milk

Lunch: Turkey slices, whole grain bread, 1% milk, orange slices and corn

Snack- Yogurt, strawberries

Check out this handout: Encourage kids to eat more Fruit!

Thanks for serving healthier meals to young children and feel free to share your thoughts about this blog post.

Shiketa Morgan

Check out Healthy Child Care Menus ebook!

Category:

Child Care Center, Family Child Care, Health/Safety, Menu Planning

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Tips For Serving Healthier Meals in Your Child Care Program

According to the Missouri Eat Smart Childhood obesity and Missouri’s Eat Smart Guidelines for Child Care, “Overweight is now the most nutritional disease of children. Preschool children who are overweight are almost 5 times more likely to be overweight as young adults.”

Missouri Eat Smart Guidelines for Childcare also concludes that children may get 50%-75% of daily food needs in childcare. This is why it is vital that childcare programs serve nutritional balance meals. Here are some tips for serving healthier meals in your childcare program:

Breakfast

  • Limit sweetened cereals served
  • choose cereal that contain more fiber
  • limit sweet breakfast items
  • provide more whole grain foods
  • serve more fruit and less juice
  • provide low-fat or skim milk

Lunch

  • Limit the processed foods
  • More raw fruits & vegetables
  • Use low-fat or fat-free salad dressing
  • Serve whole grain breads
  • offer low-fat milk as a drink

Snack

  • Limit sweet snacks
  • provide protein snacks (peanut butter, yogurt, etc)
  • 100% Juice or raw fruit
  • whole grain crackers
  • raw fruits or veggies

Thanks in advance for helping to reduce the Childhood obesity rate in America by simply making healthier changes in your menus and also by educating parents.

If you would like to receive more nutritional resources, please Download a Copy of the Healthy Child Care Menus ebook.

 

With Healthy Kids in Mind,

Shiketa Morgan

Category:

Health/Safety, Menu Planning

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