Join the Cleaner Plate Club and Edible KC for The Get Real Resolution

By Beth Bader | January 01, 2014

Before you resolve to get your kids to eat broccoli every day, give up cookies for the next twelve months, rid your family’s diet of all fast food or processed food ever, or look like [insert name of celebrity here who has a personal chef, personal trainer, and a house cleaner, gardener and nanny] in her or his last retouched cover shot of Vanity Fair magazine … wait.

LET’S GET REAL. TRY THE GET REAL RESOLUTION INSTEAD.

The Get Real Resolution is way for your family to have fun together while exploring what real food means.

Each month offers one activity or adventure to enjoy that helps your kids understand and enjoy real food. Most of the adventures are away from the family table – the battle ground for most food fights. Many of the activities don’t even involve eating a bite, but instead help your family engage in conversations about “real food” topics such as; nutrition, food label claims and food marketing, local food, food waste and hunger, and animal welfare.

Hands-on food experiences, not more food fights at the table. No daily dose of dieting required for this challenge. No nagging over nibbling allowed. Kids, big and small, will have a great time with food adventures that help them learn hands-on while they have fun:

• Crazy Food Day where the kids get to pick the most unusual, crazy fruit or vegetable they can find. Research what the food is and where it comes from. Then, try the new food as a family. Anything from foot-long green beans to fruit with spikes – take a walk on the wild side through the market!

• Just Label It helps kids experience food marketing claims and how to find the truth on a food label by finding examples of label claims on packaged foods. They get apply what they learned to making their own food label for a fruit or vegetable including the nutrition information and ingredients list.

• Color Swap challenges kids to learn about heirloom vegetables by finding familiar veggies that come in crazy colors. Kids get to explore the science of phytonutrients and the real diversity of a plain old potato. THE KEY INGREDIENT TO THIS RESOLUTION IS FUN.

If you want to stick to a resolution, make it fun. Research shows even the least motivated among us perform better on goals when they are fun. In fact, less highly motivated people may actually perform better than over-achievers when fun is involved, according to an intriguing study by researchers Dolores Albarracin and William Hart at the University of Florida.

“It’s not that those with high achievement motivation always perform better,” Albarracin said. “You can also get the low achievement motivation folks to perform better than the highs when you present a task as enjoyable and fun.”

The boost we get from fun to stick to our resolutions is also a key to learning, according to education research. It’s also important that kids get to learn and explore ideas for themselves and not just be told.

We have to intellectually engage kids,” says Anne Haas Dyson, a professor of curriculum and instruction at Illinois who advocates for playtime as part of the classroom process. “We have to give them a sense of their own agency, their own capacity; and an ability to ask questions and solve problems. So we have to give them more open-ended activities that allow them the space they need to make sense of things.”

Fun also means no nagging for parents! As a mom, I’ve seen my own kid shut down when she hears my nagging. The Get Real Resolution is designed to be nag-free fun where kids can learn for themselves through experiences that foster quality family time and a healthy relationship with food.

WE’LL ALL BE IN IT TOGETHER.

If peer pressure is your mainstay for willpower, we’ll be there. Or rather, right here on the pages of Edible KC, and online at ediblekansascity.com and cleanerplateclub.com. We’ll also be on Facebook at facebook.com/pages/The-Cleaner-PlateClub/105302999514603 ready to share successes and experiences as well as a few recipes along the way.

Look for a new activity for your family each month plus the supporting links, resources to help parents succeed. You can download kids’ content for the challenge including fun facts and tips, stories and bonus challenges. No sign ups required, no personal information shared, and no marketing food or otherwise targeted to your kids because they – and you – get enough of that.

THE JANUARY CHALLENGE

Ready to start The Get Real Resolution?

Okay, done. That’s it! No diets or sacrifices, no pushups or sit ups! Just make a commitment to try the challenges and have fun.

The first activity for your resolution is to sit down at a family dinner with a sheet of paper for each person (who is old enough to write) and answer a few questions to that will help you get the most from your resolution.

Questions for Parents:

What do you hope your family gains by taking this challenge?

What worries you most about the foods your kids will or won’t eat and why?

What’s the biggest issue in our food system?

When you were a kid, did your parents ever make you eat a food you hated? What was the food and what happened? Do you eat that food now?

What is your favorite food memory from when you were a kid?

Questions for Kids:

What’s your favorite food and why?

How do you feel when your mom or dad makes you try something you don’t think you will like?

What does “healthy” food mean to you?

What do your parents “nag” you about most when it comes to food?

WHEN YOU ARE DONE

Seal the papers up without reading any of them in an envelope (you’ll need them later) and get ready to get real. Each month will offer fun activities and educational content to support your resolution. Check the site for each month’s challenge ideas and share your stories and photos of how your family is celebrating real food.

find your edible

find your edible