Summary of Fruit and Veggie Tips

[Judy Doherty 76352,3623]

Hi to all:

Thanks to everyone who gave us their wonderful tips about getting more fruits
and vegetables without spending more time. We received a "healthy" response and
were impressed with how innovative some of them were.

As promised, here is a summary  of the ones we got that met our criteria:

- Vivian Brake, MS, RD, Eat Well and Keep Moving Project, says that students in
the cafeteria seem to eat fruits much better when they are cut up.
- Doris Oniskey is a vegetable houdini: She makes a cream soup by cooking
cauliflower with a small amount of water in which it was cooked with, and
pureeing it with a packet of soup and seasoning mix. And she makes tomato sauce
thicker by pureeing vegetables in it.
- Arnell Hinkle, MPH, RD, Director, California Adolescent Nutrition and Fitness
Program, decorates her desk with a bowl of fruit and eats it. Also, she keeps
apples in her car and carries portable, non-messy fruit to meetings and on
planes.
- Mary Lavendar Fujii, RD, Nutrition Advisor, University of California
Cooperative Extension, buys prepared fresh vegetables in large sizes at a
warehouse store so she has to eat them before they spoil.
- Dr. Carol Friesen, PhD, Assistant Professor, Family and Consumer Sciences,
Ball STate University, Indiani, has the simple suggestion, "Buy it, you'll like
it!" If it is not in the house and placed somewhere convenient, you'll leave it
in the store instead of your tummy.
- Kari Bachman, New Mexico STate University Dept of Extension Home Economics,
includes veggies and fruits in almost everything they make with their EFNEP/FNP
participants, including: grating raw fruits and vegetables and putting into
breads/pancakes/salads, grating raw veggies and putting into spaghetti sauce,
pinto beans/stews, mashed canned or cooked veggies in mashed potatoes, using
canned pumpkin with all of the above.
-Kathryn Rolland, RD, MBA, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San Jose, CA
relies on putting dried fruit in many foods to increase fruit intake.
- Ann M. Coulston, MS, RD, President-elect of American Dietitic Association,
General Clinical REsearch Center at Stanfor University Hospital, purchases two
cooked vegetable for lunch each day at her cafeteria.
- Elsa Ramirez Brisson, MPH, RD, Monterey County ARea Agency on Aging, takes 5
pieces of fruit to work each day and makes it her goal to eat them all before 5
PM.
- Marie Fasano Ruggles, Family Nutrition Network has a double/triple rule,
"Double or triple the amount of vegetables called for in a recipe."
- Olivia Bennett Wood, MPH, RD, Associate Professor, Food & Nutrition, Purdue
University, has a couple of good ideas for fruit beverages: Drink juice instead
of pop, blend fruit in juice or ginger ale and slush it for summer beverages
(not any more time to make than koolaid or lemonade), and blend berries with
lemonaide.
- Judy Price, Food and Nutrition Educator, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and
Donna Scott, Food Safety Extension Group, Cornell University, came up with this
ingenious idea together: Draw a rough, empty Food Guide Pyramid each day. As
you go through the day, record the number of servings of each type of food in
the Food Guide boxes. That helps you to think about what you have consumed
overall and reminds you to choose fruit, vegetables or grain items over other
less nutritious choices.
- Sandra Godwin, PhD, ASsociate Professor, Dept of Family & Consumer Sciences,
Tennessee State University, uses orange juice as the liquid for jello.
- Lindra Drake, MS, Nutritionist and EFNEP coordinator, Cooperative Extension
University of Connecticut, uses the toaster oven and toasts blueberries on her
bread. She also uses fresh sliced fruit to replace the jelly on a peanut butter
sandwich.
- Cindy Brison, MS, RD, LMNT, Extension Educator, University of Nebraska
Extension in Douglas County, says that baby ready-to-eat carrots are great for
snacks. While they cost more than even 2 pounds of regular carrots, they cost
less than a snack attack at the vending machine.

Hope you enjoy these as much as we did.

Judy Doherty
Executive Editor
Food for Health Newsletter