Healthy Drinks for Kids

There's a lot of talk about getting kids to eat healthy, but what about getting them to drink healthy? What a child drinks can drastically affect the amount of calories consumed, as well as the amount of calcium needed to build strong bones.

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15 Healthy Foods to Pack in a School Lunch

Starting your kids off right by packing school lunches with nutritious foods that taste good will help them establish healthy eating habits for life. Instead of a sandwich on white bread, bag of chips, and cookies, try some of the following healthy (and more interesting) items for your child's lunch box:
* Wraps made with whole wheat tortillas, containing either lean cold cuts or lowfat cream cheese topped with veggie slices. Even the classic PB and J (peanut butter & jelly) is healthier in a wheat wrap.
* Single portion-sized cups of unsweetened apple sauce or fruit without added sugar.
* Trail mix made with cereals, nuts, pretzels, dried fruit or raisins, and a few chocolate morsels.
* Low fat cheese spread on whole wheat crackers.
* Individual serving-sized packages of low fat yogurt, cottage cheese, or yogurt smoothies.
* Baby carrots, celery sticks, or apple slices with dips made from yogurt or low fat sour cream.
* Mini-burritos made with rice and black beans or refried beans in a tortilla with tomato salsa. These can be heated or eaten cold.
* Baked chips or pretzels are a better choice than high-fat potato chips or cheese snacks.
* Drinks made from water with a splash of cranberry, peach, grape, or other fruit juice are healthier than sodas. Excess consumption of pure sugar-laden juices can increase the risk of obesity.
* Whole grain bagels topped with cream cheese-vegetable spread.
* Air-popped popcorn flavored with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.
* Low fat cheese cubes and seedless grapes make a delicious side dish for sandwiches or wraps.
* Cold strips of grilled chicken with honey mustard dip.
* Dried cranberries or cherries are a sweet alternative for kids bored with raisins.
* Quesadilla slices made with cheese and chicken or vegetables.
Tips from Medicinenet.com

Stop & Chew Your Dinner

In this era of fast-paced everything, even the act of eating a meal has become something we can do on the run. Breakfast comes in bars, lunch can be eaten while speeding down the highway, and dinner is merely an accompaniment to the evening news, squeezed in between other pressing activities. Invariably, when eating plays second string to everything else, every meal becomes “fast food,” as in eaten-very-fast food. If you find yourself wolfing down your meals in a hurry, you’re actually shortchanging yourself in more ways than you might think.

It turns out there’s a reason food tastes so good. You’re supposed to enjoy it—slow down and savor it, not just get it to your stomach as quickly as possible. Chewing your food thoroughly is actually the first step in the complex process of digestion, and if you glaze over it, just chewing the minimum amount of times necessary to get the food down your esophagus, you’re actually compromising this process. And it’s a mistake many people make.

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Cases infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Saintpaul, United States, by state, as of July 29, 2008

CDC is collaborating with public health officials in many states, the Indian Health Service, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate an ongoing multi-state outbreak of human Salmonella serotype Saintpaul infections. An initial epidemiologic investigation in New Mexico and Texas comparing foods eaten by persons who were ill in May to foods eaten by well persons identified consumption of raw tomatoes as strongly linked to illness. This was a strong epidemiologic association, and tomatoes from that time period remain under investigation. After the public warning concerning tomatoes on June 7, cases continued to occur, though at a lower rate.
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2008 Healthy Living Summer Camps