The Parent Support Group at the Community Center has teamed up with Healthy Lincoln County’s Nutritionist Lara Cogar to provide talks on nutrition.

On Saturday, Feb. 4, Cogar met with local parents and covered several topics related to providing a healthy diet on a budget:

• Simple recipe ideas that children like.
• Adding more vegetables to your day.
• Making half your grains healthy whole grains.
• Know your fats.
• Reading and interpreting food labels.
• Comparison shopping to find the best price and quality.

After the “talk” portion, we all rolled up our sleeves, washed our hands and prepared English muffin mini pizzas and a salad for lunch. The mini pizzas had chopped and grated veggies hidden under the cheese, a great way to get more vegetables in your child’s daily diet.

A healthy diet that includes all the essential vitamins and minerals is critical to a child’s development. It helps ensure:

• Better memory, learning and focus
• Stronger immune system
• Overall better health and growth

Cogar’s friendly yet professional approach was well received by the group. She understands the hectic schedule of parents of young children and how that can lead to eating less healthy yet convenient foods. With that in mind, she presents practical ways to simplify eating healthy. The favorite tip of the day was to have your child pick out food items at Hannaford that have three stars on the shelf price tag. Hannaford has a program called the “Guiding Stars” where 3 stars indicate food that has the most health benefits. This is a great way to involve children in choosing to eat healthy foods and be helpful with the task of shopping. It’s a win-win!

If you missed the meeting on Feb. 4 but would like to attend a nutrition talk, don’t despair! Lara Cogar will be back with the Parent Support Group at the Community Center on Saturday, March 4 from 10 a.m. to noon for more great healthy eating tips.

The Parent Support Group meets every other Saturday morning from 10 a.m. to noon at the Community Center in the Meadow Mall (next to Family Dollar). Meetings are scheduled through April 2017. All meetings are free of charge and there is free on-site babysitting with Red Cross Certified sitters. The next one is Saturday, Feb. 18 where the topic will be Routines, one of the 5 R’s of positive discipline. For more information or to register, please contact Liz Lussier at 633-1162 or by email at lizlussier@netzero.net.