Whether staying in town this summer or traveling, take the time to explore all the local food available.  Consider planning a short trip around a visit to a farm, market or restaurant that sells or serves local and organic food.  Visit LocalHarvest.org to find farms and markets around the country.  Talk with farmers and ask them about their produce and other products. Have your child choose a food to purchase - maybe some fresh spinach, gorgeous berries, local eggs, homemade ice cream or maple syrup. While enjoying the food at home or on your trip, talk about the benefits of eating local foods with your children - better for their health, the farmers, the animals, the planet, etc. 

If you want to make feeding your family REAL food every day easier, this is the only 'recipe' you need.  Build each meal and snack around these 3 main ingredients.

 

Read more: Recipe for a Balanced Meal & Snack

Establish a Garden Bed With Your Child that is Just For Your Child! One of the hardest parts about gardening with children is letting go of your perfect rows or plant spacing. By establishing a garden bed just for your child, you allow them their own space to experiment in, while you work on more delicate garden tasks. 

Vegetables and Fruits kids will love to watch grow (and then eat!): 

 

Read more: A Garden of My Own

So many of us are eating on the go these days and we're teaching our children this bad habit.  By teaching your child to eat 'at a snail's pace' more often, you will be improving your child's health.  Digestion begins in the brain.  Thinking about food, smelling the aroma, seeing the colors, all send messages to the brain to get ready to break down and assimilate all these nutrients. Chemical changes actually happen in the body. 

It's a great practice to teach kids to take a half a minute and express some sort of gratitude for their food while noticing the colors, smells and textures. This slows the body down and preps it for proper digestion.

Read more: Eat Slowly

As a family, track how much water you are drinking each day. Post our Water Chart on your fridge and see how many ounces each person drinks each day. Set a goal for everyone to drink ½ their body weight in ounces per day before drinking any other beverages. So no coffee, tea, juice or sports drinks until you reach your daily goal. This alone can improve everyone's health!
 

On Valentine's Day this year, instead of focusing on sweets, have a Naturally Red Taste Testing Party. Talk to your child about the difference between REAL red food and Fake red food, most of which are also loaded with sugar. Brainstorm some REAL red food or go to the grocery and pick some up. Set up a taste testing party for your family and invite some friends. You can incorporate this idea throughout the year just by changing the color to reflect the color of the holiday or season. Get REAL and toss out Artificial Colors, Flavors and Additives.
 

Teach your child the difference between artificial flavors and REAL Foods. Be Food Detectives over the next month and check out ingredient labels of foods that your family eats. Collect any packaged foods listed as having artificial flavors in a container in your kitchen. Make sure to save labels from snacks given at school, sporting events and church. Ask when you eat out whether what you order has artificial flavors or you can look it up online.

Read more: Be a Food Detective

Purchase some unrefined sea salt, such as Celtic salt, and some regular table salt. Put some of each in separate bowls. With your child study the differences in appearance and in taste. Pay attention to the color in the unrefined sea salt - shades of gray and pink - next to the pure white of the table salt. Teach your child that the colors are due to the mineral content of the unrefined salt. Minerals are from the earth and are essential to our health.
 

Read more: Healthy vs. Unhealthy Salt

With Halloween just around the corner, our ghosts and goblins get loaded up with lots of Fake Foods. While it's okay for your child to enjoy some holiday treats, allowing him to eat all the candy he receives is unfairly setting him up for poor health and poor behavior. What can you do? Make a trade. Talk to your child ahead of time about your parenting decision to limit the amount of Halloween candy that gets eaten and explain that you want him or her to have fun, but you also have a job to take care of his or her health.

Read more: Halloween Trade-In

Use pieces of red, yellow and green construction paper to help kids sort REAL, Bridging and Fake foods. REAL food is as close to its natural state as possible. REAL food doesn't have labels. REAL foods are foods your great-grandparents would have had in their kitchen.  Kids understand that REAL food clearly grows in a garden, a field or an orchard - or is raised on a traditional farm.  Organic fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, raw cheese and milk, plain full-fat yogurt, sprouted grains, grass-fed meats and poultry are examples of REAL food that would go on the green paper – they're Green Light Foods  - or Grow foods that help you grow smarter, faster, stronger, happier, or whatever is important to you.

Read more: Sorting Food - REAL, Fake, Bridging

Bring home the berries! Buy some organic blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries. If you can't find fresh, frozen is fine. With your kids, make a list of how you can add more of these amazing foods to their diet – in yogurt, on cottage cheese, in smoothies, on celery and nut butter instead of raisins, or just eating them plain! Berries are loaded with antioxidants and have so many health benefits, one of them being increased protection from the damaging rays of the sun.

Visit www.kidshealth.org to find an article written for kids about sports and nutrition. Read and discuss it together. Then, look over your weekly schedule together to determine how frequently your child is eating and drinking Fake food outside of the home. Together, come up with a plan to decrease that amount. Brainstorm some Real food snacks that your child likes and are convenient to take to sporting events. Put your plan in action over the next few weeks and together celebrate your progress by doing something healthy together. Learn more ways to handle Outside Influences (school, sports, church, etc.).

 

Pull out your household cleaners – dish detergent, glass and counter cleaners, bathroom and toilet bowl cleaners, oven cleaners, and any others. Look on the labels to determine if each product contains the word Danger, Warning, or Caution. Make a commitment to replace each toxic cleaner with a nontoxic alternative or as a family make your own nontoxic cleaners. No time or desire to make your own?  Try Naturally It's Clean- they really work!

Make your own non-toxic air freshener with your kids! Unlike toxic air fresheners and candles, using essential oils can benefit your family's health.  Many are proven to support the immune system and kill bacteria and viruses.  Mix 1/4 cup of water with your favorite essential oil fragrances.  Try this blend at home:  15 drops lavender oil, 8 drops citrus oil or lemon oil, and 2 drops eucalyptus oil.  Or try Aromandina's IMMUNE Blend - perfection! 

 

It's so important to eat a variety of REAL colors each week.  The colors found in fruits and vegetables represent different phytonutrients that work synergistically to support your child's health.  Help your child track the colors she eats every day using our Color Chart.  The goal is to eat vegetables and fruits with every meal and snack and eat a variety of colors. Teach your child how important the different 'natural' colors are to her body. These colors help her see better, think smarter and run faster, have beautiful skin and so many other things. This is a very easy way for everyone to increase the vegetables and fruits eaten each week!
  

Sometimes people think organic food will not taste as good as the conventional versions. Remember, organic means fewer chemicals, not less taste. Choose one or two of your regular favorites – strawberries, apples, milk, cheese - and purchase an organic version of the same food. Have the family do a side-by-side taste test. This would be a great time to talk a little about what organic means and how it is better for your health and the health of our planet. 
 

Take your child on a grocery shopping trip, but this time instead of actually shopping, act like REAL Food detectives. Spend some time in the produce section studying the fruits and vegetables. Talk about the colors, shapes and textures. Figure out which ones came from a tree or a vine or from under the ground. Talk about the ones you've tried and the ones you haven't. Discuss how different fruits and vegetables can be prepared. Before leaving the store, have each person pick out a fruit or vegetable that they have never tried. When you get home have a taste-testing celebration. Whether or not everyone likes the new finds, reinforce that you are all being Adventurous Eaters!
 

Purchase a bag of organic flax or chia seeds, which can be found at your local grocery store or online at Wilderness Family Naturals. Put a little in a bowl so your kids can look at it and feel it. Explain that flax and chia seeds comes from plants and they are foods that help keep people very healthy because they contain omega-3 fats. Essential fats have to come from our food because our bodies can't make them. Explain to your child that her brain is two-thirds fat, so this omega-3 fat will help her brain work better so she can be her smartest self!

Read more: Grinding Flax & Chia Seeds

Pick out 2-3 of your child's favorite packaged foods and drinks. Have a box of sugar packets and tape on hand. Look at the top of the Nutrition Facts section to see what a serving size is. For example, a 20-ounce bottle of pop is actually considered two and a half servings, or a serving of cookies is two cookies, even though we may eat four or five.

Read more: How Many Sugar Packets?