This weeks movement snack is more of an actionable step that can be taken to ensure you and your family are eating the colors of the rainbow.
Jackie shares with us the nutrients she feels are most important to ensure we are supporting our immune system as we head back to school and then I am providing you with a chart that you can use to ensure all of you are eating the colors of the rainbow.
This week our movement snack is going to not be so much about movement but rather more of an action step. And I want you to focus on the foods that you are eating, we are going to work on supporting our immune system. And Jackie is going to provide us with some information in regards to the different nutrients she feels are most important to support the immune system. And then some foods that you can try to ensure that you are eating to help support it during this time that children are going back to school. And there is a lot more viruses going around. So when it comes to immunity, really all nutrients are important for proper immunity function. But specifically some that I tried to focus on when it comes to myself and my clients is iron, zinc and selenium. Some foods where you're going to find iron, of course, let's think of Popeye. So yes, spinach is one of them. chickpeas, oranges, eggs, and that's one of the important things to the eggs need to be whole. A lot of people think that they can only or will choose to only have the whites, but you want to make sure it's a whole egg, chicken and red meats for zinc, you're going to find that in shellfish, red meats, chicken, again, cashews, almonds, and legumes. And then Selenium is going to be found in nuts, specifically Brazil nuts and Brazil nuts are one of the highest concentrated foods with selenium, seafood, eggs, yogurt, and oats. And one of the things I think is really cool when it comes to nutrition and food. They're all kind of intertwined together. So you can see some similarities in those foods, vitamin C and vitamin D are a couple of other important nutrients to consider. And vitamin C, I'm just going to say all plants. And that's why it's important to include a variety in color as well as just fruits and vegetables in general, vitamin D, this is going to of course come from the sunlight. And even though I'm a dietitian, I do want to make sure that yes, sun screen is important. But we need to have as much of our skin exposed for 20 minutes before we put on the sunscreen. Otherwise, we're just not going to get to those rays that are needed to become vitamin D. And then of course fortified foods are going to give us another source of vitamin D and mushrooms in particular. I don't see it often. But the there are certain mushrooms who who there are people now, there are certain mushrooms that have been underneath a light that is specific somehow in vitamin D production. I honestly don't know the whole science behind it. But I did find that there is a place in Orlando that does have it. I can see if they're still there. This was before COVID. I don't know if any of that has changed, but I will look to see. And then of course probiotics and prebiotics are important too, because of gut health. Yes, even though it may seem like a fad, it is important to have good microbiota, probiotics are going to come from yogurt and fermented vegetables, prebiotics, that has the components that are needed to actually feed our helpful bacteria. And that's going to come in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and beans. And I want to stress on the whole grains because again, this is just another reason why it's important for us to make sure that we do include whole grains and not be afraid of them. So bottom line, make sure you're including a variety of all foods that are plants and even some animal products. Or if you don't want to do animal products, make sure that the nutrients that are coming from the animals, you're going to get what's needed through plants. And if I have to sum it all up, I'm going to say to not stress about it because added stress is just going to make all of our efforts kind of go down the drain so little bit each day will help to get you to where you need to be for better immunity. Well in looking at I love going back to what my pediatrician has always said to us and I think it helps for us ourselves as well. Looking at the day, and think about how your children and you eat over the week. So rather than trying to get all those things in every single day, let's look at are we ensuring that we get all those foods over the week? Definitely. And this is just thinking off the top of my head. I don't little kids anymore. But something that could be fun is to look for a chart, I mean, you're gonna find a lot of amazing stuff on Pinterest, but maybe a chart that the kids can say, Oh, I had this fruit this day. And I'm gonna stick this little fruit here, because this is what I ate here. And this, you know, I just think it would be kind of fun, you know. And that's going to also let you see at a glance, what am I missing. And instead of you all having to go search for a chart to use with your family, I have created one for you, you can find that at form fit naples.com backslash, fruits and veggies. And there, you will receive a PDF, downloadable PDF that you can print out and post on your refrigerator to ensure that you all are eating all the colors of the rainbow to help you ensure you're getting the nutrients you need in each deck. And what I would recommend doing is in the circles, you could each write your initials so that you don't have to print out five different charts. That would depend on your family as to whether or not you can all share a chart, but you could put your initials in each color. And then the other thing I want you to be aware of his What? What are you noticing, do you notice a trend where maybe everyone's getting almost everything in but you all are missing purples. So maybe what you do is and I'm just giving you an example here, if you have green grapes, but your children are eating celery and they're eating lettuce and they're eating broccoli, they're eating their greens in some other form. Maybe you switch to purple grapes to help ensure that they're getting that purple in. So just an idea for you. But a chart helps you to see where you might be lacking certain nutrients when it comes to your fruit and veggie intake. And that is your actionable step this week rather than a movement snack. And I do hope that you all have a very healthy, healthy year.