THE MARKETPLACE (blog)

A’viands is celebrating National Nutrition Month! Each week day during the month of March, our Nutrition & Wellness team will be providing a Wellness Tip of the Day.

National Nutrition Month® is a nutrition education and information campaign created annually in March by the American Dietetic Association. The campaign focuses attention on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and physical activity habits .

Today’s Topic chosen by A’viands Nutrition & Wellness team:

Cooking at Home

Having a family and working full or part-time can make it difficult to have a healthy, home cooked dinner on the table for the family.

A simple tip for helping make dinner easier is… Planning Your Menu

By planning a menu ahead of time, you will be able to see the benefits of:

- Saving money at the grocery store. By using a grocery list, you will generally buy what you need and less food will thrown out. You’ll also see saving because you won’t going out to eat.

- Your health will improve. More good home cooked meals will lead to less convenience foods and less fast foods.

- Your stress level will drop. It’s 5pm, what’s for dinner?!?! Need not worry if you’ve planned out a menu ahead of time!

- You will have more time. Fewer runs to the store and waiting in line.

- Quality family time will increase.

- Teaching children invaluable life lessons. By cooking at home, you can teach your children how to cook, how to eat healthy, or even the importance of quality family time.

Where to start planning a menu?
For an abundance of great ideas, try using your favorite search engine provide and search the term “free menu planning ideas”.

Adding new recipes into your a menu
If you have a list of main entrees you or your family already love, try incorporating new menu ideas/recipes you may have found online throughout the month. If you felt the recipe was a success, add it to your list of favorites and place the recipe in a 3 ring binder.

When it comes to planning out a menu, try to have one in mind at least a week in advance. You might find it helpful to write a menu on a dry erase calendar that is placed in the kitchen, and write a grocery list as you are creating a menu.

You may not find that you will follow your menu perfectly all of the time, but you will probably find that it will make life a little bit easier!

For more information about National Nutrition Month or the American Dietetic Association, please visit their site at: www.eatright.org/nnm

If you have questions about nutrition and wellness, please feel free to contact our our Registered Dietitians at: askadietitian@aviands.com