In a recent article I wrote for HuffPost Parents, I outlined ways we could all help fight the childhood obesity epidemic. As you grow into building your own families, it's important to find ways to educate yourself so that your efforts could contribute to that cause as best possible. While I am not telling you to shift your entire fridge to becoming organic or to create a gluten-free household, I am providing a few ways for you to try and become more hands-on or as we say "do it yourself" i.e. DIY. The goal being that you are able to access a list of resources to help you fix a meal, plan your grocery list, and stay on top of important health information without having to waste time searching.
Grokker.com (website):This site was created by Lorna Borenstein, an internet savvy business woman, and primarily offers fitness content. However, upon further exploring, I came across their cooking class videos which I find to be their secret sauce. Today's era allows us to simply set up our laptop or iPad in the kitchen and follow along recipes or videos. Grokker's cooking section offers content such as baking and cultural cuisines. There are 43 experts who contribute to over 1500 videos for the consumer to access -- anytime, anywhere and for FREE!
The Family Cooks (recipe cookbook): I was recently invited to a Huff Post Roundtable discussion with Laurie David and Kirstin Uhrenholdt introducing their mission and this cookbook. Their goal is to encourage families to find ways to cook dinner together more often. Put simply -- take baby steps to ensure that your fridge could easily contain a variety of elements to whip up a meal in under 30-45 minutes. While I am not an extremist on my nutrition or fitness habits, I do believe that many of their tips are useful and build healthier habits. *After reviewing the book, I became obsessed with storing food in mason jars.
Veria Living (website and TV channel): Veria was created to provide a one-stop shop for health and wellness content focusing on wellness therapies (ayurvedic, massage, acupuncture, holistic living), recipes and cooking, fitness videos and written content and even a coaching concept titled "Veria Companion." The information is easy to access and if you subscribe to the Dish Network, Verizon or RCN cable networks, you could access their channel. Otherwise there are plenty of videos on their website and streaming is available.
While these are only a few resources, I found them to provide useful content if you're limited on time!