Smarter Mealtime Encourages Kids to Eat More Fruits and Veggies
What is Smarter Mealtimes?
Smarter Mealtimes is a nationwide movement that encourages kids to eat fresh fruits and veggies. It’s based on proven strategies for nudging kids to select and eat the healthiest foods at mealtime. These strategies are dedicated to providing caregivers the knowledge, motivation, and resources needed to build a lunchroom environment that makes the healthy choice the easy choice.
Benefits of Smarter Mealtimes
- Is easy and inexpensive to implement
- Increases children’s satisfaction with meals
- Uses simple evidence-based strategies to gently nudge children to make healthy choices
- Empowers, energizes, and engages child care providers
- Increases the amount of healthy food children eat
- Reduces waste
Five Easy Smarter Mealtimes Strategies
- Pair cut vegetables with low fat dip
- Offer at least 2 types of fruit and 2 types of vegetables
- Offer fruits and vegetables first and last during mealtime
- Use stickers of popular characters to promote healthy options
- Provide fun, creative, descriptive names to fruits, vegetables, and main dishes
Resources for Teachers
To read more about the Smarter Lunchrooms movements, go here.
