Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Painting Your Plate with Color: The Fun of Nutrition!

Written by Anna Grace Rotsko
Part of National Nutrition Month 2012


Nutrition is often thought of as cutting out the foods we like to eat, and replacing them with foods that look and taste like cardboard, yuck. But, nutrition can be fun! Eating well is finding the balance between the foods we get to enjoy. Use your plate as a palette for different color, flavor, and texture making a masterpiece of a meal. Sometimes we think we don’t have time or money to make a masterpiece, but just like art, a masterpiece can be simple or complex - whatever you make it.

Quick Nutrition Tips:

Use www.Myplate.org – Find out and track how many calories and servings of food groups you are eating a day.

Fun Calories - We are allotted a certain number of calories a day to use on eating whatever we like!! Hint: We don’t expel energy, we use it. Anything extra we eat… we keep and it turns into fat.

Try New Things -It can take 8-10 times to try a new food before enjoying it. You never know when you’ll be surprised!

Quick Guide to Serving Sizes - 3oz of meat = the palm of your hand. 2oz of cheese = your index and middle finger. 8oz of fruits and vegetables = 1 measuring cup. 1 serving of bread = 1 slice of sandwich bread.

The More Color, the Merrier - Different colors means different vitamins and minerals in food. The more color on your plate, the more variety of vitamins and minerals you will get!! 

References

Colored Plate: Chopin, B. (Photographer). (2007). digital-dinner [Photograph]. Retrieved from

Detailed Painting: Durand, A. (Photographer). (1855). The First Harvest in the Wilderness [Photograph]. Retrieved from

Modern Art: Lee, S. (Photographer). (2009). Abstract in C [Photograph]. Retrieved from


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