Last week I sat in on the Fruit & Veg Consortium's Advocacy Update Meeting. The theme of the update was Shifting the dial on vegetable consumption (you can watch the replay here if you like). At the meeting, they shared the findings of a new report produced by KPMG and were seeking support to have a National Strategy to raise vegetable consumption. Of course, The Root Cause supports that 100%.
Here are some pretty important but shocking statistics: (taken from the KPMG report)
// 46% of people have less healthy eating habits due to Covid-19
// 36% of adults believe that the Covid-19 Pandemic has negatively affected their physical health
// 51% of adults stated the Covid-19 Pandemic had a negative impact on their mental health
// 17% of Australians are now eating less vegetables than before the Covid-19 Pandemic
// 1 in 4 Australian adults are eating 1 serve or less of vegetables per day
// 91% of Australians do not eat enough vegetables (5+ serves a day)
If these are the stats mainly for Australian Adults, what does this look like for our kids?
The report doesn't go into stats for Children, but let's just be 100% real here. If parents are eating less healthy and less veg, it's highly probable children are eating less healthy and less veg too. Before Covid 96% of children weren't eating the recommended amounts of fruit and veg. What is that figure now I wonder?
Don't you find these stats worrying?
Perhaps you may even see yourself in these stats. Please do not beat yourself up if you are - a pandemic is not normal - it's a global traumatic event. It's understandable if things took a slide. Cut yourself some slack.
I had this very discussion in the monthly Coaching and Q&A Session for my Kids Health Quest Members. A mum was talking about how she "used to be so good", and now she's found she's just not been doing it - "not making the effort".
Oh my gosh, we have a way of beating ourselves up with a big stick.
I coached this mum to realise there really isn't a wagon to fall off. The wagon is her just judging herself against what she used to do. How about if we just recognise and accept that during Covid and all that's ensued, we prioritised other things - like staying sane, homeschooling, surviving.
How freeing it is to allow ourselves this grace, and to give ourself permission to reset and start again.
I made this little sharable for you... Please keep a copy of this for yourself, and please share it. Every parent / carer needs this right now.
From this position of resetting, let's start to think about what we can do to boost nutrition.