Errick Road School offers healthy Fun 2B Fit mac & cheese recipe
on lunch line after a successful taste testing.  See Photo

For immediate release: January 30, 2009
Contact: Olivia Belter - (716) 857-6312

Buffalo, NY - Errick Road Elementary School students will have a new dish on their lunch line next week: healthy macaroni and cheese. The school decided to make the popular dish a lunch line item after Errick Road second graders tried it, along with 11 other healthy recipes, as part of a taste testing series in the spring. The taste testing is part of Univera Healthcare's Fun 2B Fit™ program, which is a school-based initiative encouraging children and their families to make healthier food choices by trying new foods, increasing their level of physical activity, shopping for healthy foods and preparing meals together. Errick Road has participated in Fun 2B Fit every year since the program was launched in 2005.

But the mac and cheese isn't the only item to make it to the lunch line. Since the spring, the school has been offering one Fun 2B Fit recipe on the lunch line each month, including a healthy pizza.

One-hundred twenty second graders participated in the taste testing, which began on March 6. The students sampled healthy breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack recipes such as Cracker Snacks and a Banana Oatmeal Cookie. Students were encouraged to try all the foods and received a laminated recipe card to take home so they can make the recipe with their family. The students also received lime green, kid-sized chef aprons to encourage them to cook with their parents and help with food preparation.

In March, Errick Road third graders will participate in a physical activity lesson entitled Why it's Fun 2B Fit. The third grade students, led by a Fun 2B Fit fitness trainer, will take part in a 30-minute workout developed especially for kids that incorporates easy, fun dance moves and stretches. During the workout, students are taught the muscles of the body and their function, and discuss the importance of physical activity and how it can be fun and easy to do at home with family members. Before the workout, the kids discuss what it means to be 'fit.'

Parents of all students participating in Why it's Fun 2B Fit receive a backpack full of tools to help them make healthy choices for their families. Each tool kit contains a magnetic grocery pad for the refrigerator with pre-printed healthy items on each tear-off page, a magnet with everyday tips on how parents can keep their kids healthy, a Healthy Family Pledge to be signed and displayed in the home, and the tool kit itself is a sling-style backpack that can be reused as a gym bag, or to take on family outings.

Fun 2B Fit offers the Eat Well. Live Well. Tour for fourth graders, which is a 2-hour shopping and food preparation field trip to Wegmans based on the Food Guide Pyramid. The tour is intended to be the first step in developing good eating habits by introducing children to a variety of healthful foods in a fun and interactive way. The Eat Well. Live Well. curriculum allows children to see and taste nutritious and tasty foods while reinforcing math, social studies, and science lessons for the typical fourth-grader.

Fun 2B Fit was created by Univera Healthcare to combat childhood obesity and is based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the New York State Learning Standards. According to the American Obesity Association, of six to 11 year olds, 30% are classified as overweight and 15% are considered obese.

More than 17,000 Western New York students at 70 schools have participated in Fun 2B Fit. The program is being offered to select schools in the Western New York area after a successful pilot program was conducted in 2005.

Fun 2B Fit has been honored with two awards for Publication Excellence (APEX Awards), two international MarCom Creative Awards, a Civic Empowerment Award from the Greater Buffalo All-America City committee, an Award of Distinction from the Video Communicator Awards, a World Wide Web Health Award, and the American Academy of Pediatrics newsletter CQ, a national publication, acclaimed Univera Healthcare for this innovative program.

Fun 2B Fit program partners include Wegmans Food Markets, Inc., Body Shaping By Sandy, the Healthy Community Alliance, and Lifetime Health Medical Group.

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