Welcome your classmates and students back to school with these fun fruit masks!

The first week of school is a great time to remind students about the importance of a healthy lifestyle. 

Here are the 4 messages that the 

Back to School fruit mask discusses: 

1. Eat Breakfast everyday.

2. Stay hydrated by drinking at least 6 cups of water per day. 

3. Eat healthy by incorporating fruits and vegetables. 

4. Subtract sugary and processed foods and drinks. 

To download your free Back to School Mask click here. 

Have a great school year and don't forget to "like" our Facebook page: ABCD Eat Right or visit our Teachers Pay Teachers site! 

Breakfast bonus! Inspiration from cherry season. What do you make for breakfast with cherries?

I love to make waffles. I am working on a side project that has me in the kitchen testing new waffle ideas. 

This morning my inspiration was cherries! I posted the recipe on my recipe site, click here for a protein packed, no sugar added, quick and healthy breakfast option! 

Join us for our Back to School jam 

packed blog extravaganza all throughout August! 

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Brandi@ABCDEatRight.com

Unrefined on Vacation- 5 tips to keep refined food out when you are out of town

Traveling is a great place to get in your refined foods. Theme parks, beaches and family reunions host a number of unhealthy eating choices. This is also a time of year where you may feel compelled to throw out your healthy eating habits and give in to the easy route of fast food and quick picks.

Here are five tips for circumventing the junk on your family vacay so that you don't go home feeling worse than you did before you left for your summer fun.

My family went to the Florida Keys and Orlando this summer to meet with family, enjoy the laid back life of the Keys and indulge in the themed park craze that all children are attracted to. Here are 5 things that you can do to make your vacation healthier.

1. Research rocks-
A little pre-planning goes a long way. After you have picked your vacation city do a search for healthy fare in the area. Find out which restaurants have healthier choices. Here are a couple of websites I like to look at: www.vegdining.com and www.happycow.net

2. A little pre-shopping goes a long way-
Let's face it, no matter how hard we try there are very few "clean" options available at theme parks. The best that we did were salads but we ate at the best restaurant the theme park had. It's best to bring your own healthy snacks. When we went to the theme parks we loaded up on dried fruits (mangoes, raisins, cranberries), dried nuts, Kind bars, apples and oranges as well as bottled water.

3. Dine in-
When choosing a place to stay, consider a condo or renting a house. The ability to have a kitchen is by far a life saver when trying to avoid unrefined foods. Double check to see if you have access to a grill. This is a great way to spend time with the family in the great outdoors and an easy way to cook vegetables and lean meats.

4. Hydrate the right way
Don't forget about the importance of hydration. Sometimes being dehydrated gets in the way of eating healthy. Your efforts to take in extra fluids can lead to your intake of easy refined foods that are quick to grab when grabbing a drink. Bring your own water bottle full of water, fresh juice blends or smoothies.

5. Adventure hunt - Seek out local produce or farmers markets in the area where you are vacationing.When we were headed down to the Florida Keys we stopped at an amazing local fruit stand called Robert is Here. Our kids experienced amazing local tropical fruit and we bought enough local produce to last us the 4 days we were in Key Largo. To find local farmers markets in your area of vacationing visit:  http://www.localharvest.org/

Remember not to stress! Relax...you are on vacation.

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Defining Unrefined...Getting started and making a difference in family health

What does unrefined mean? 

The Dietitian's Husband Unrefined was founded on the basis of making my own family healthy. It is a lifestyle plan that has evolved from years of being married, raising children and practicing as a Registered Dietitian in the community. Through the years my family has tried different lifestyles such as vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian, raw, flexitarian and various other weight loss plans or exclusion diets. Ultimately, I don't believe in excluding any food groups or promoting a single food that will cure all or promote weight loss. Healthy living is about having a balance in life and in the kitchen. Learning about where food comes from and how it effects our bodies is the most important piece of education that I could provide to my family as well as my community. I hope that you follow our journey as we live in reality but without refined foods. 

Lets get started on our journey and dive into what the meaning of unrefined is and how it will be interpreted in Dietitian's Husband Unrefined. The dictionary defines unrefined and processed as below:

Unrefined [uhn-ri-fahynd] means:  Not processed or refined.

Processed ˈ[präˌses,ˈpräsəs,ˈprō-] means: Having been altered from their natural state for safety reasons and for convenience. The methods that may be used for processing foods include: canning, freezing, refrigeration, dehydration and managing hazardous bugs that infiltrate a product. 

The idea of processed food is usually thought of as bad but in reality we need to process some foods in order for it to make it from farm to table. Here is where the gray fuzzy line is drawn between unrefined and processed. We do need to process food to kill bacteria and provide a product that is formidable to eat but we do not need to add chemicals, colors, excessive salt and sugar and strip a food of its normal nutritive value only to add it back in. 

Therefore, we need to establish a list of five rules for foods that should be considered unrefined and these foods should be excluded in the Dietitian's Husband Unrefined NOT TO EAT list. 

1. If the food can only be made in a factory by a machine or was invented by a food scientist.
2. After reading the label you find that there are more than 5 ingredients on the label and most of the ingredients contain unpronounceable chemical and color names. 
3. The food item has been on the shelf for many years and has still yet to expire per its expiration date. 4. If it is a recipe that can not be made in your kitchen. 5. If it comes from a place that has a drive thru or takes less than 5 minutes to make at a restaurant. 

 Over the next few weeks I will continue to define the foods that should be included in a way that teaches our audience about what our food really contains. We will include recipes and feedback from other Dietitians in the community and photos of the unrefined lifestyle. We will work on the male of the house and explore the relationship between his health and the rest of the families influence by the changes that are made. 

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What does your husband eat? No really :) Launching of Dietitian's Husband UNREFINED!

Your other half, the man in the house, your significant other, your best friend, the father of your children...whatever you may call him, have you ever thought about what he eats? In our quest to get our kids eating healthy we had to take a really good look at what I ate AND what my husband ate. Growing up in the 80's our eating habits revolved around cereal, soda, candy and processed quick foods. Learning to cook was not necessarily a focus when we were growing up and eating organic wasn't even an option.
Now that we are 2K parents it is important to take a look at what we eat an how it influences our kids. 
There are some good things we do like never eating at fast food places (except Chipotle or Tijuana Flats- gotta have my tex-mex sometime) and we definitely don't do donuts for breakfast. As a dietitian I try to get in my fruits and whole grains and my husband the same. We have experimented with a spectrum of eating different diets including: raw, vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian, pescetarian and gluten-free and along the way we have discovered some foods that work for us, especially my husband.

We have zoned in on a "diet" ,although I hate that word but does define the mode of eating, that works for us and especially my husband.

We will be sharing these thoughts and hope that you enter yours. I know I am tired of hearing about crazy diets that people do that may work for a little while but don't really help in the long run. So follow our progress and vlogs as we roll down a healthy path as a way to keep our family as healthy as they can be!

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Dietitian's Husband Unrefined!

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