Nutrition 101: Choose Life! Can Change Your Family’s

Posted by Lorren on September 25, 2009

I was recently given the opportunity to review the digital edition of Nutrition 101: Choose Life!. I was really impressed by this book. This book is great for families, high school students, and even adults (whether they have children or not). The book has different usefulness at different ages.

For elementary students, Choose Life has a lot of good activities to do, like brushing their teeth with their non-dominant hands, and then brushing their teeth with their dominant hands, and comparing which one is easier. There are discussion questions, like “why are hydrogenated and trans fats bad for us?” There are healthy recipes that kids can follow, like Potato Salad with Flaxseed Oil. There is a lot to this book that would go over their heads, so you may want to absorb the information yourselves and teach it to your kids while you are doing an activity – like making the Power Recipe.

Older students can start reading the book themselves. There are also more activities that are geared towards older students, like “[creating] a song about the organs used in digestion and elimination, to the tune of ‘Dem Bones.’” If your child is really interested in a subject, they can delve more deeply into it by reading some of the additional resources.

I mentioned earlier that this book is great for adults as well. While most of us grew up learning about the four food groups (or perhaps the food pyramid, depending on your age), many of us live a fast-food lifestyle and have forgotten what it really is like to live a completely healthy life. As I was reviewing this book, I decided to make changes to my children’s diets, by including more fruits and vegetables. The kids took to it really well, and I have lost eight pounds without dieting. I was also impressed by a chart in the appendix that linked the decrease in butter use with the increase in heart disease. I am now incorporating more butter and olive oil in my cooking.

The course is developed by a naturopathic doctor, who tend to have a different view of the world than your typical medical doctor. They rely more on nutrition to keep people from illness than in medicine to alleviate symptoms. The author is also a Christian, and incorporates God and his creation into the book.

Right now, I am using this book more as a manual to discuss issues of nutrition with my kids, and to focus on feeding them in a more nutritious manner. This book can probably be used more than once with your children, as you can add more detail as they get older. Your kids can never be too healthy, right? This book is also important to use on a consistent basis, as kids today are constantly bombarded with fast food advertisements and junk food.

I highly recommend Nutrition 101: Choose Life! to people who want to eat more nutritiously in order to be healthier, and want to teach the skills to eat nutritiously along to their children.