Plan ahead for food shopping, meal preparation and acceptable snacking. Watching what goes into your child’s mouth requires effort ahead of time, but the trade-off is how much easier evening meals and eating on-the-go will be.

THE CHALLENGE

1. Plan your meals and snacks for the week ahead. Download the Shopping Guide.
2. Make a shopping list that includes all of the ingredients you need to purchase based on your plan.
3. Head to the grocery store! Commit to sticking to your list. Download the Nutrition Facts Label document.
4. Read labels and consider options before choosing your items.

JOURNAL QUESTIONS

After You Shopped

Answer the following questions after you completed your shopping trip.

1. Notice how you feel after your grocery shopping trip. Make a few notes on how you felt as you put items into the cart. Did you read the nutrition fact label for any or most of the items you bought? What did you pay attention to when reading the label? What was the inner conversation you had with yourself as you picked each item?
2. How long did it take you to shop?
3. Where did you spend the most time in the store? Produce and fresh fruit? Dairy? Snacks and chips?
4. Did you choose what was on sale over what was not? Why or why not?
5. What factors drove your shopping decisions and choices you made?

At the End of the Week

Answer the following questions at the end of the week.

1. Did you stick to your meal and snack plan this past week? Why or why not?
2. Did you have all the ingredients you needed for each meal?
3. Was it easy to prepare healthy meals? Was it easy to stick to eating healthy snacks? Why or why not?