Celebrate National Nutrition Month® with 9-5-2-1-0 for Health

The National Nutrition Month® 2013 theme, "Eat Right, Your Way, Every Day," encourages personalized healthy eating styles* and recognizes that food preferences, lifestyle, cultural and ethnic traditions and health concerns all impact individual food choices. Registered dietitians play a critical role in helping people eat right, their way, every day.

National Nutrition Month® is a nutrition education and information campaign created annually in March by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. The campaign focuses attention on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and physical activity habits. This year is the 40th anniversary of National Nutrition Month®. (http://www.eatright.org/nnm/)

In 2005, parents, health departments, PE teachers and other stakeholders across Northern Virginia, in partnership with Inova Health System, created the Northern Virginia Healthy Kids Coalition spell out of concern over the growing childhood obesity rate in Northern Virginia. NVHKC believes that parents are key to combating childhood obesity. The Northern Virginia Healthy Kids Coalition's Campaign is a community-wide strategy for improving child health through healthy lifestyle promotion.  The goal is to change child health behaviors by creating healthy environments where children live, learn, and play. 

The Coalition's main tool is "9-5-2-1-0 for Health" (on a daily basis, 9 hours of sleep; 5 servings of fruits and vegetables; no more than 2 hours of recreational screen time; 1 hour of physical activity; and 0 sugary beverages). When changing behaviors, parents/caregivers are advised to not try to completely overhaul a family's habits all at once, since success is more likely to occur when choosing one behavior to start, making small changes gradually.

Parents/caregivers are essential to a child's healthy lifestyle. It is important that parents/caregivers model the type of behavior we want our children to have. Parents/caregivers who make health a family affair are more likely to create habits that stick. Involve the family as far as choosing activities to do. Since not all children enjoy organized sports, parents need to think outside the box when coming up with activities for their children. Find fun activities that keep to the body moving.

Parents/caregivers also need to set an example for their children, and it is easy to start small with family meal planning, evening walks or playing in the backyard. The goal is to establish lifelong habits.

Celebrate National Nutrition Month® (and beyond) by following the "9-5-2-1-0 for Health"™ guidelines every day to help your child make healthy choices:

9 Get at least 9 hours of sleep per day: Recent research has linked inadequate sleep with a higher risk for childhood obesity. Adolescents and teens should get at least 8.5 to 9.5 hours per day, and younger children should get more.

5 Eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day: Eating five fruits and vegetables per day promotes good health, and may reduce consumption of unhealthy foods which contribute to unhealthy weight gain.

2 Limit screen time to 2 hours or less outside of school: Higher volumes of screen time are linked to higher rates of obesity. Screen time may promote inactivity, snacking and decreased metabolism.

1 Get at least 1 hour of physical activity per day: Physical activity has many health benefits, but research shows that most kids don’t get enough.

0 Eliminate sugary drinks: Sugary drinks are empty calories that contribute to unhealthy weight gain and other health problems.

For more information on healthy lifestyles please visit

www.NorthernVirginiaHealthyKids.org and www.inova.org. Follow the NVHKC on facebook.