Thursday LOVELAND REPORTER-HERALD/Health Line of Northern Colorado September 15, 2011 5
Search for it, Share it, Like it, Pack it New PVHS program offers parents healthy lunch ideas Summer Stair Reporter-Herald
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here are many reasons why eating a healthy lunch is important. One of the biggest reasons is having fuel to get through the day. This is especially important for students who are constantly learning and developing. For many parents packing a healthy lunch that is exciting can be overwhelming. Keeping ideas different and out-of-the ordinary can be hard. Because of these many reasons, Poudre Valley Health Systems decided to take what they had already been doing for years, which is providing healthy recipes and nutrition tips through their employee wellness programs, cafeterias and community events, and adapt it for parents. “Our goal is to help our community get and stay healthy,” noted the program organizers in an email. “We know parents are busy and are often looking for something quick and healthy to include in their child’s lunch.” Through their website, Facebook page and Twitter, PVHS has started posting healthy sack lunch ideas for parents. “We knew parents would have easy access to these fun and nutritious lunch ideas.” With the help of not only the community but CanDo, a community coalition that is coordinated by staff at the Community Health and Foundation Development department at PVHS, recipes that promote packing a nutritious lunch are constantly being posted. According to program organizers, since the site was launched on Aug. 22, there have been more than 5,400 hits to the recipes at pvhs.org and several people have helped share the recipes through their own social network connections. So far, the Strawberry Cream Cheese Sandwich and the Pizza Roll-Up have been among the most popular. Not only does the program aim to help parents keep kids fit and provide them with fuel to learn better, but program organizers hope the community forum can grow beyond sack lunches. “We first want to develop a good base of healthy sack lunches and then we may move on to other categories such as quick and easy dinners.” The kid-friendly, great-tasting recipes are aimed toward making sure each lunch has a balance of whole grains, lean proteins, a variety of fruits and vegetables, and calcium-rich foods. While there is currently no name associated with the program, those in the community can find these great recipe and snack ideas in the “Healthy Recipes” section of the Community tab at pvhs.org.
Share, submit recipe ideas Submit your own recipe ideas online at http://pvhs.org/healthy-recipes, or post them on PVHS’s Facebook page after you “like” them.