TOS review: Growing Healthy Homes: Nutrition 101: Choose Life

I received an electronic copy of Nutrition 101: Choose Life from Growing Healthy Homes to review.   This 448 page book is full of information. 

When I first received this book, I spent some time reading the first 17 pages as recommended by the authors.  These pages include an introduction, information about the authors, the table of contents and a getting started guide to the book.  It was definitely the right place to start.  The introduction discussed why we should be taking care of our bodies, citing Bible verses.  One of the suggestions given was to read the chapters in advance especially when dealing with younger kids to determine if you want to read the chapter to them or just summarize the information. I highly recommend summarizing if you have younger children. This book is full of technical information.

The book is divided into six main units:

• the brain and nervous system
• the digestive system
• the respiratory, olfactory, auditory, and visual systems
• the skeletal and muscular systems
• the cardiovascular and immune systems
• and the endocrine systems and emotions.  

Each unit is further divided into "bite sized" chapters.  The chapters include a "power recipe" to try and other activities to do to expand on the lesson.  It is not necessary to start with Unit one.  You can choose any unit to begin with. The book also includes information on exercise and health and beauty products as well.

There is an appendix section with many good resources including (but not limited to) the authors own food pyramid, nutritional recommended daily allowances (RDA) for men, women and children broken down into age, a grocery shopping list to print out, vitamin and mineral charts, a guide on selecting fresh produce, information about the use of microwaves and information about health and beauty products, such as shampoo and soaps.

Our experience and opinions:

This book is not simply a nutrition curriculum-it's a health curriculum.  The chapters take one part of the body (i.e. the brain), explain how it works and then discusses foods that are good for that part of the body, why it's good and what nutrition the foods provide.

Personally, I don't think this is really an elementary curriculum-at least not lower elementary.  I would say it's more for grades  6 and up.  But I also think it's a good resource for parents-no matter what age their children are. The chapters do include elementary activities that are appropriate for the younger ages.  With younger kids, it would be best to read the chapters yourself and use your own words to explain it to them.  Then do some of the fun activities suggested at the end of each chapter.   

I asked my kids what they thought of the book so far.  Precise Prince said it was interesting.  Creative Princess didn't like it as much.  If you read my blog or know my daughter, this should not surprise you.  As mentioned, this book is technical and I just think it's a little too much for her to comprehend, although she definitely has been learning from it.  She is able to answer simple questions about what we have read she also enjoyed the few projects we did from the book.

One of the things we did that the kids really enjoyed was to make one of the recipes suggested in the book.  We made the Greek Salad in Unit 1, chapter2.  They both enjoyed making it. Creative Princess didn't care for the taste though she willingly tried it.  She is my more picky eater and usually doesn't like salad though so this wasn't a surprise.  Precise Prince and World Traveler really liked the salad and both had second helpings.  I enjoyed it as well.

One of the other things we did was I printed out the shopping list in Appendix 3.  I had the kids mark off all the foods they would eat.  The list is full of healthy foods and I am impressed with how many foods my kids actually marked.  I haven't had a chance yet, but when I do the next big grocery shopping trip, I will use their list to buy some of the foods they have chosen.  We did a similar thing after reading the first chapter of the book.  The kids picked out some of the foods recommended in chapter one and I bought them.  This really encouraged them to eat healthier since they were the ones choosing the foods.

This book really emphasizes healthy eating to the point that I can see some people may feel guilty for that occasional store bought cookie. I am all for healthier eating but I am one who will eat my occasional candy bar and not feel bad about it.  There is food pyramid in this book that the authors made that is not the same as what you will find on the USDA website.  For example, their daily recommendation for vegetables is 10-13 servings per day-much higher than what the USDA recommends. 

The bottom line-this is a good, comprehensive curriculum.  The price is a bit steep for my household but there is a LOT of information in this book. 

Nutrition 101: Choose Life is available as a bound book for $99.95.  The CD-ROM version only is $79.95 and the combo book/CD-ROM is $129.95.  I recommend the bound book or combo.  It is much easier to read in book format rather than reading on it on the computer.  The CD-ROM as an extra would be nice though for easy printing out of the recipes and other resources.  Growing Healthy Homes is offering a 15% discount for you if you use coupon code TOScrew11.

Go here to see what my fellow crewmates had to say about Nutrition 101: Choose Life.

(I received a free e-book of Nutrition 101: Choose Life in exchange for my honest opinion.)