Four More Gardens for Healthy Kids

Paradise Greetings,

Thank you Growing Healthy Kids and Kiwanis Club volunteers: Katherine, Joe, Lou, Katy and husband. Thank you to Amy and staff at Hibiscus Children's Center. Thank you to all the kids at Hibiscus. You are now the proud owners of four new gardens! What an awesome morning of energy, enthusiasm and sweat equity! We built the gardens, filled them, and planted them. Now, with water, sun, and love the butterflies and vegetables will come!

It is an honor to be able to create some new spaces for the kids at Hibiscus. I'm excited about the butterfly gardens. Within an hour of getting the first butterfly garden installed for the kids, one of the boys came running over to me and exclaimed that he'd just seen his first butterfly!

When I was there yesterday for our first healthy cooking class, most of the seeds had germinated and were already a couple of inches high. Our first lesson was that fruit is a healthy snack, not fruit juice. Now to teach the adults who serve those children...

It is fun to play in the dirt! The adventure continues! What is YOUR favorite butterfly?

Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health - and lives of children, one garden and one child at a time.

To your perfect health!
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids

Growing Healthy Kids Promotes Recycling, Garden Art, and Healthy Snacks

Paradise Greetings,
Whirlwind trip to New York City over the Easter weekend to witness our amazing Vero Beach High School band kids play on stage at Carnegie Hall! WOW!! I'm so glad I was there! The sound quality at the Performing Arts Center will never be the same compared to the Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. Our music program is such a gift to these children. We must protect all children's access to music programs such as the one at Vero Beach High School and its feeder schools. Thank you, Mr.Sammons and Mr. Howell, from a very grateful parent.

Another gift we, as a community, can give children is the knowledge, ability, and skills to eat healthy for a lifetime. One of today's pictures is from a recent "indoor picnic" Growing Healthy Kids had with one of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Indian River County: the menu was fresh fruit slices dipped in vanilla yogurt mixed with cinnamon. Did you know that up to 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon a day can help reduce blood sugar and bad (LDL) cholesterol according to USDA study?

The kids LOVED the "Fresh Fruit Dippers". I, however, did NOT love the concrete picnic floor!

Other picture: 2 very large palm containers saved from county landfill and brought to art volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club with request to have kids decorate for use as outdoor vegetable containers. The results BLEW ME AWAY! Way cool! What do YOU think---- let's recycle lots of these and start THE SALAD REVOLUTION.

Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health and lives of America's children - one garden and one child at a time. Let's start a revolution. A health revolution. THE SALAD REVOLUTION.

To your perfect health.

Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids

Improving Children's Health with Fabulous Florida Fruit Shakes

Paradise greetings,
This is spring break week for kids in Indian River County. My son leaves tomorrow for New York City to make his Carnegie Hall debut with the Vero Beach High School band. How AWESOME is that? I am very proud of all the kids in the band.

Last week Growing Healthy Kids taught kids at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Indian River County how to make Fabulous Florida Fruit Shakes and another Seal of Approval was received for this tasty recipe. The kids joyfully passed out samples to staff members in between running to the teaching garden to check on our mustard greens, carrots, peas, beans, and tomatoes. Everything is growing!

Eating fruit every day is important for great health. Blueberries and strawberries are two of the world's healthiest fruits. They are very nutritious and taste great. Blueberries are low in calories (40 per 1/2 cup) and are powerful disease fighters (which is one reason why I eat a cup of blueberries every day). Strawberries are the most popular berry in the U.S. They are very low in calories (20 per 1/2 cup) and are rich in antioxidants, heart-healthy nutrients, and vitamin C.

Flaxseeds are the most concentrated plant source of omega-3 fatty acids and contain anti-inflammatory properties. Flaxseeds are a very good source of dietary fiber (the lack of fiber is a big reason why kids and adults eat too much!) and contain both insoluble and soluable fiber. The fiber in flaxseeds has a cholesterol-lowering effect. Only use GROUND flax seeds - 2 tablespoons a day - use on yogurt, cereal, salads.

Ready for the recipe that received the Growing Healthy Kids' Seal of Approval last week? Put in a blender: 1 cup fat-free milk, 1 cup frozen blueberries, 1 frozen banana, 5 Florida strawberries, and 1 Tablespoon ground flax seeds. This is enough to feed several kids and have them asking for more! Thank you, Publix Supermarkets, for providing the ingredients for this recipe.

Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health - and lives - of kids, one garden and one child at a time.

To your perfect health!
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids

An Apple a Day...

Paradise Greetings,

Last week I gave a guest lecture for future nurses at Indian River State College. I had been asked to inspire them to be powerful patient educators. My goal was to inspire them to be transformational leaders of health instead of disease.
I taught them how to read a food label. I taught them how to choose foods without added fats, sugars, and salt. I taught them how to choose foods with fiber instead of foods and drinks with no fiber. What surprised me what how many of these nursing students were overweight and obese. I asked each student to calculate their own Body Mass Index, write it down, and hand it in. Yikes!
What's your body mass index (BMI)? Two out of three adults is overweight or obese. No wonder one in three kids in America are overweight or obese. Go to www.cdc.gov for a BMI calculator.
Make one simple change a week to improve your health so you can be a transformational leader. Eat an apple instead of having apple juice. The apple has dietary fiber, juice has none. Fiber is what fills us up. Fiber doesn't raise our blood sugar. After all, you know the saying, "An apple a day..."
Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health - and lives - of America's children, one garden and one child at a time.
To your perfect health.
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids

Planting Seeds for Growing Healthy Kids

Paradise Greetings,

Notice anything unusual about this photo? The kids are 100% engaged in planting seeds in the teaching gardens at the Boys and Girls Club - and getting some extra physical fitness added into their day without ANY protest! I just love teaching the kids how easy it is to eat smarter and move more!! This photo was taken yesterday during my regular weekly Growing Healthy Kids program. Some of the seeds we planted a month ago didn't make it because of the unusually cold weather we're having (coldest winter since 1958) so it was time to plant again. After all, according to our friend, Spencer Porteous, plants need sun, water, and love to grow!

Radishes, lettuce and green peppers are coming up now. We have another head of cauliflower about ready for harvest, so more "mashed cotatoes" next week! Despite our extreme weather the past couple of months, the green peppers we planted on October 13 are still alive and producing new peppers. The boys were absolutely intrigued using my camera to get close up pictures of the tiny peppers. I loved it when one of the kids said to me, "We need to plant more marigolds." And so we will...

All the kids went home with a packet of seeds compliments of the cancer prevention program at Florida Department of Health with instructions to sow them this weekend. Each child also received their own garden tool to use at home. You would have thought it was Christmas!
Growing Healthy Kids-improving the health of America's children, one garden and one child at a time.

To your perfect health!
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids

Teach a Child to Grow

Paradise Greetings,

What do YOU think about all the added sugars, fats, and salt in the lunches our children eat at school? I think it's time to improve the quality of food served to our most important resource - the next generation. Improving the nutritional quality - and access to locally grown foods - are 2 of the 4 points in The First Lady's new childhood obesity campaign.

I think it's time for a food revolution. Let's have a Salad Party and get the greens and the good stuff from our local farmers. Let me know if you want to help. When you eat more of the good stuff, you eat less of the bad stuff. Keeping it simple.

It's like last Friday at one of my weekly Growing Healthy Kids program for kids served by the Boys and Girls Club, something magical happened. A couple of parents were picking up their children and said to me, "Is that my son eating VEGETABLES???" When you give kids a healthy choice, they choose health!!

Today's picture is from last Friday at one of the teaching gardens. Peas. Green beans. YES, YES!

Growing Healthy Kids - improving the health - and lives - of America's children, one garden and one child at a time.

To your perfect health.
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids

Jumping Jacks & Green Beans

Paradise greetings,

What, you may ask, do jumping jacks and green beans have in common? Ecofest, that's what! Today's Growing Healthy Kids' adventure was being part of Ecofest this afternoon at a very special place in northern Indian River County, the Environmental Learning Center. Five volunteers and I greeted hundreds of children and their families who wanted to take home a plant (green beans & radishes). To "qualify" to make a seed pot, the kids were asked to do 10 jumping jacks.

We got the place hopping alright. Kids were jumping, then they played in the dirt. While the kids were busy, I talked with lots of parents and grandparents about Growing Healthy Kids' tips for making small changes for improved health. One of the simple tips I shared was to replace fruit juice with fruit. Parents, remember the saying, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away"? Know why? Fruit contains fiber, which is what fills us up. It takes a lot of apples to make 8 ounces of apple juice. Did you know 1 cup of apple juice contains 7 teaspoons of sugar and NO FIBER (CLUE: fiber=good stuff we need and we don't get from drive-through dinners (you know, places like the one with yellow arches and a clown with red hair) or the "enriched" wheat breads most people eat. The high amounts of sugar in sweet tea, sodas, fruit juices, and white breads are the problem. Diet sodas aren't the answer. I saw a lot of moms this afternoon drinking diet sodas. When I told them that new studies indicate that people OVEREAT when they drink diet sodas because their brains don't get the signal that food is on its way and they're full, they were like, "REALLY?" I'm optimistic that there are a couple more families looking at the nutrition facts label on the bread they have at home tonight looking to see how many grams of dietary fiber it has. (CLUE: We need 14 grams/1000 calories we eat.)

Here's my suggestion for healthy snacks with apples: apple slices with Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter, apple slices with a couple of walnut halves, or apple slices with a couple of slices of cheddar cheese.
Try it! Choose health. Stay tuned and remember: fruit, not fruit juice. Got it? Good.

Growing Healthy Kids, one garden and one child at a time. What fun!!

To your perfect health!
Nancy Heinrich
Founder, Growing Healthy Kids