Jean Bianchi sharkey Clarendon Early Education Services, Inc Jean Bianchi sharkey Clarendon Early Education Services, Inc. Bedford, MA Jbianchi-sharkey@clarendonees.org

Best Practices Fruits & Vegetables Limit consumption of fruit juice to no more than 1 serving per day Make at least 1 of the 2 required components of every snack a fruit or vegetable Provide at least 1 serving each of dark green vegetables, red/orange vegetables and legumes per week

Our Approach Clarendon Early Education Services has implemented best practices as proposed by USDA for limiting fruit juice to no more than one serving per day. We all know children love to drink juice. If juice is full strength, 100% and pasteurized, it is creditable. However, there are many concerns of providers serving too much juice.

Successes We suggested the following: Substituting fresh fruit for fruit juice at breakfast Substitute any juice at meal time with fresh fruit for one component and a vegetable for the other. These suggested practices cut the juice consumption down considerably!

Challenges Because most people do not like changes CEES put together a letter for our providers stating facts about fruit juice versus fresh fruit. The letter was extracted from several pediatricians and based on their findings* (the letter included words like obesity, diarrhea, lacking in nutrients, keeping kids busy chewing vs drinking etc.) this gave the providers ideas from “pediatricians: and NOT their food program.

Lessons Learned After the facts we suggested, we found juice consumption down considerably! We have shared handouts with our providers so in turn they will share with the parents. Feed back has been a positive one: Parents stating “yes, my pediatrician has discussed this with me also”. This proposed best practice has also encouraged the posting of daily menus so that parents are aware of their child’s daily consumption for that day.