News

March is National Nutrition Month. The national theme this year is: "Eat Right, Your Way, Every Day." The goal this year is to promote healthy eating while recognizing that food preferences, lifestyle, cultural and ethnic traditions and health concerns all impact individual food choices.

Registered Dietitian Day, also celebrated in March (on the 13th), recognizes Registered Dietitians (RDs) as the food and nutrition experts. All Children's Hospital has 18 RDs (also called nutritionists) on our staff.

Our Nutritional Services pediatric RDs specialize in optimizing nutrition for growth and managing nutrition support and modified diets for patients. Many of our RDs have master's degrees and/or board certification in pediatric nutrition, nutrition support, lactation counseling and personal training.  They provide nutrition care across the health system including inpatient, outpatient and coverage at six of the Outpatient Care Centers, as well as clinical supervision of our Formula/Breastmilk Preparation Room. 

RDs work in many other areas throughout All Children's Hospital, including: Early Steps, Food Services, and Community Education/Fit4AllKids program. 

The RD in Early Steps provides nutrition counseling for patients as well as nutrition support for Happy Mealtimes, the intensive feeding therapy program.

Food Services will be celebrating National Nutrition Month by focusing on a new health and wellness oriented program in the cafeteria called Mindful. As part of this, they will be offering many specials and new international dishes. 

Community Education/Fit4AllKids will be highlighting many of their programs during the month including:

• Kohl's Cooks for Kids- a 5 week cooking program, teaching kids to prepare healthy meals.
  
• Dirt To Plate- an educational insert in the Tampa Bay Times which provides great information on fresh foods, gardening and cooking.
  
• www.Fit4Allkids.org - our updated website includes videos with our pediatric experts and fun cooking and culinary videos the whole family will love.
  
• Fit4Allkids Weight Management graduation, which will take place at 4 different program locations in March.