COMMUNICATIONS

Canterbury Kids Need More Veggies

Encourage kids to tuck into veggies, is the message for Cantabrians this World Food Day (16 October).

According to the National Children’s Nutrition Survey many children are not eating enough vegetables every day.

As part of the Ministry of Health’s Strategic approach to improving nutrition, increasing physical activity and achieving healthy weight, the new Feeding Our Futures marketing campaign is encouraging parents to make half their children’s meals vegetables.

Health Promoter Penny Wilson from Canterbury District Health Board’s Community and Public Health division says when good nutrition and healthy eating habits are established in childhood, they are more likely to continue into adulthood, promoting positive health and overall wellbeing for the future.

“A simple rule to follow to ensure our children are well nourished is to make sure vegetables make up half of the meal. This includes colourful vegetables like carrots, pumpkin, silver beet, cabbage, broccoli, mushrooms, or salad vegetables. Penny says canned and frozen vegetables are a good alternative to fresh. “Other ways of helping our kids to eat more vegetables, include cutting them into different shapes, eating them raw or cooking them in different ways, like steaming or microwaving”.

“Vegetables are important for growing children, and kids need to eat a variety of them every day to get the right mix of goodness onto their plates,” Penny says.

To support the Feeding our Futures message a new “Edible Gardens” campaign is underway in 22 pre-schools in Canterbury. This is a joint project run by Hauora Matauraka, the Nutrition and Physical Activity team at Community & Public Health (a division of CDHB), and the Cancer Society. Edible Gardens are a way of improving children’s understanding of where fruit and vegetables come from, helping them link what they see on a supermarket shelf with what they have grown.

This years theme for World Health Day, the ‘Right to Food’ raises awareness of a basic human right to access at all times to food, or to means for the procurement of food, that is sufficient in quality, quantity and variety to meet their nutritional needs. Involving families in growing and cultivating food in their communities is a creative way of addressing Food Poverty and ensuring more people have access to a healthy diet.

World Food Day was first proclaimed in 1979 with the aim of heightening public awareness of the world food problem and to strengthen solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty.

Check out www.feedingourfutures.org.nz for more information about vegetables and recipes for simple every day meals.

ENDS