Nutrition Planning with MyPyramid

Nutrition Planning with MyPyramid

http://mypyramid.gov

The U.S. government has released new nutrition guidelines, incorporated into a snappy rainbow-colored pyramid so chock-full of symbolism that you should get course credit for remembering it all.

But still, the guidelines have generally been praised as representing the state-of-the-art recommendations in nutrition, so it's worth a look.

For a math moment with your kids, go to the site and help your child fill in his/her age, gender and activity level. The site will give back a page of how much of each food group your child should eat every day. Print the page. Serving-size information is given in ounces and cups, so get thee to the kitchen - help your kids measure how much milk is in their usual drinking glass and help them convert their recommended allowance of milk from "cups" to "glasses."

If you have a kitchen scale, your kids will enjoy weighing slices of bread, bagels, etc. to see if they're more than a serving. If you don't have a scale, you can help your kids figure out how much a slice of bread weighs by dividing the net weight on the package by the "servings per container" information on the nutrition label.