Food Made Fun: Featuring SuperKids Nutrition's Super Crew® (Part 5 of 5)

Meet Super Baby Abigail. Her powers change with the different foods she eats. Wearing her blueberry encrested cape, Baby Abigail gets her powers from all kinds of foods, and she is constantly finding out new powers she gets with every food she tries. Baby Abigail is part of the Super Crew® characters, a group of culturally diverse, superhero kids who get powers from eating healthy foods of certain colors. Brought to life through the Super Crew® colorful website, coloring pages and beautifully illustrated children’s books, the Super Crew® encourages kids to understand and value the importance of good nutrition. Super Crew® adventurous learning is geared toward children ranging from pre-kindergarten all the way up to 8th grade. My daughter has both of the Super Crew® books - Havoc at Hillside Market and Super Baby Abigail’s Lunchtime Adventure – and loves them! As a mother, I love them because they reinforce what I teach her about what “always” foods do for her body. The extra benefit with these books is that there are free downloadable book guides and activities that the kids can do to reinforce their learning.  The Super Crew® coloring pages are wonderful for children to color or watercolor while moms are cooking.  If you "like" the SuperKids Nutrition Facebook fan page, you can get daily tips on feeding your family.
The Super Crew® was created by a dietitian that I highly regard, Melissa Halas-Liang, MA, RD, CDE. I met her a few years ago when she was developing her SuperKidsNutrition site (back then it had a different URL) and was looking for online article editors. “Kids are savvy consumers and they make choices based upon what they know,” says Melissa. “The problem is that children have been inundated for years with kid-targeted marketing and messages and that becomes what is familiar. At SuperKids Nutrition, we are trying to change that by providing kids, parents and schools with knowledge about the powers of healthy foods and making healthy choices and showing them how simple education can make a difference.” [More on Melissa Halas-Liang, MA, RD, CDE in a future Mommy Dietitian guest interview.]

When I met Melissa back in 2007, she was just finishing up Super Baby Abigail’s Lunchtime Adventure and we instantly connected due to our passion for helping healthy families. Since that time, her SuperKids Nutrition and Super Crew® sites have really taken flight. Not only is her Super Crew® portal a place where kids can have fun learning about food, but her SuperKids Nutrition website is a place where parents can get “news you can use” child nutrition information and recipes. As a pediatric and family dietitian, SuperKids Nutrition is one of my favorite family nutrition websites by far. And by the way, remember Super Baby Abigail? She is named after Melissa’s now 4 year old daughter who’s favorite food from the beginning was blueberries.

As I wrap-up Mommy Dietitian’s 5-part series on "Food Made Fun," my hope is that you take time to expose your children to these resources. Tell your friends, schools and communities. Spread the word so that these resources will stay around for maximum impact. These resources empower children to make the right food choice for their own sake – not just because Mom or Dad said so. And that will help set them on a right path that you can be proud of years from now. Cheers to that!