With childhood obesity quickly reaching epidemic proportions in our country, I think it is in everyone's best interest to teach healthy eating habits to our kiddos.  While the food pyramid is an effective visualization tool for learning basic nutrition, sometimes it's helpful to bring the lessons directly to where they are put into practice...on our plates.

That's why I was thrilled to learn of a brand new game designed for children ages 4 years old and up from Learning Resources, entitled Healthy Helpings MyPlate Game.  Keep reading to learn more about a fun, family way to make good nutrition a top priority!

Healthy Helpings of Valuable Nutritional Knowledge Abound

Teach children to identify foods and their food groups according to the USDA-approved MyPlate, and create healthy meals as part of game play.  This game accommodates 2 to 4 players and the object of the game is to complete a healthy meal on your MyPlate using one food from each food group.

The rules are extremely simple and easy to learn.  Basically, players take turns spinning the spinner and following the directions of one of the three different types of spaces they can land on:

Food Group:

Select a food card that you think belongs to that group.  Check your answer by looking at the color on the back of the card.  If you are correct, put the card on your plate.  If you are not, put the card back in the pile.  If you already have food on your plate from that food group, skip your turn.

Give:

Give a food from your plate to another player who needs it.  If you don't have any food on your plate, or if no other player needs the food you have, skip your turn.

Take:

Take a food from another player's plate.  If no other players have food on their plates, or if no other player has a food you need, skip your turn.

Children won't always have their parents there making food-related decisions for them and I love how the Healthy Helpings game from Learning Resources teaches children to make wise nutritional decisions for themselves.  It would be my guess that after playing this game for several months, the MyPlate image will forever be burned in a child's memory, which is a good thing.  Once that happens, they'll be mentally playing this game each and every time they fill their plate, to the benefit of both their minds and bodies.