Healthy Eating: Dole 5 A Day Program

Hi. We have been having a great time in therapy using this website in treatment. Food education is a vital part of any food chaining program. You can use the website to help teach a child about fruits and healthy eating. We have a lot of fun in therapy and we focus our treatment on making food enjoyable. So many kids never enjoy eating. Be creative in therapy and use a low pressure approach, just remember the cardinal rule, once the food is in front of the child it is HIS CHOICE whether or not to eat it. Just having food in front of him is a learning experience about the appearance, texture (by touch) and aroma. We model eating the food. Our comments are about the food, its appearance, how it taste/what it tastes like. We do not say things like, "eat it" or "take a bite." Many times that is the difference. We set up a social situation to give the kids a pleasant experience, we model tasting food and so many kids then go on to follow our lead and do the same when the pressure is off.