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Fruits & Veggies Challenge

At our company, our Benefits Department integrates fun activities for the corporate office to incorporate health and wellness into our busy days at work. To start off this year they came up with the Fruits and Vegetables Challenge. The challenge is a fun approach to help us increase the amount of servings of fruits and vegetables in our diets.

During Ferbuary, we challenged each other to eat more fruits and vegetables and at the end of the challenge the employees who had the most points won fun prizes! (On a side note,  I won 2nd place. Woo hoo!)

Everyone who participated received a challenge log sheet to record the points each day and a ‘quick tips’ sheet to provide us with easy ideas that we can follow during the challenge. All forms of fruits and veggies counted – fresh, frozen, canned, dried and 100% juice.

Try the challenge yourself; here are just a few of the quick tips. You get a point for each one!

Helpful hint: a trip to Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes really increases the number of fruits and veggies for the challenge! I got 10 points per day on days I went to our restaurant!!

  • Eat a red fruit or vegetable (like apples, tomatoes, red peppers, beets or strawberries)
  • Eat a white fruit or vegetable (like potatoes, onions, cauliflower, bananas or white peaches)
  • Eat one more fruit or vegetable today than you did yesterday
  • Eat fruit for a snack today
  • Make a vegetable omelet for breakfast
  • Eat fruit for dessert today
  • Add vegetables to your soup, rice or pasta at dinner
  • Cut up vegetables for easy access in your refrigerator
  • Enjoy one cup of 100% fruit juice with breakfast
  • Keep a snack bag of dried fruit (like raisins or cranberries) in your purse, brief case or desk at work
  • Try a new method for cooking vegetables (grilling, roasting, sautéing)
  • Make a low-fat dip (like black bean dip, hummus or salsa) to accompany raw vegetables

10 thoughts on “Fruits & Veggies Challenge”

  1. I, my husband and my children were in early February at “Souplantation” 1860 Marron Rd Carlsbad, CA 92008-1172 and my youngest son has forgotten his new toy, inside the box closed again. It was the “Thomas & Friends LEGO.” We stayed in a hotel in Los Angeles Beverly Hills, we left a few days later to San Francisco. I called and the toy was there but could not get back the lost toy store in you. You could send the bin to my residence in Brazil?
    Thank you for your attention and await response
    Att Cecilia Sbruzzi

  2. On Friday, I read about this, and I thought it was a great idea. I hadn’t had breakfast yet, so I made a veggie omelete, with peppers and sprouts. It was really, really good! Check one! I also had the most delicious juice, called Fruitables. It’s like V8, only better. That’s two points! Now, I don’t go to work, because I’m still a student. But we get to bring snacks at recess, and I usually bring a sodium-filled bag of Chex Mix or something like that, so instead, I brought a mixture of strawberries and raisins, which is surprisingly a great combination! I’m up to 5 points now (I brought the dried fruit to school, I had fruit for a snack, and I ate a red fruit.) Then, for lunch, I had peaches, bananas, and onions in my stir-fry. Those are all white, which brings me up to 6. When I got home from school, my mom and I (who, admittedly, do most of the cooking) cut up veggies and put them in the fridge. That’s seven, and that was really helpful, because after my homework was done, we moved on to dinner. Our meal consisted of pasta alfredo with broccoli (8), grilled carrots (9), and homemade for our hummus for our celery (10). We’re Catholic, and I gave up dessert for Lent, but my mom said it was okay, so after dinner, my family and I ate a frozen mixture of fruits galore (11)! I’m usually not that healthy of an eater, so I’d have to say I definetely ate one more (or more than that!) fruits/veggies today. That makes 12, and they were all so deliciously craved by my whole family that my mom and I made the same yesterday, and, with a few tweaks, are going to try to pull it off today. Thank you, Sweet Tomatoes!

  3. I love the idea of the Fruit and Veggie challenge. I work for an elementary school district and this would be a great way for the PE teachers to encourage children to eat health in a fun way. Way to go! Great idea!

  4. I absolutly love the souplantation. I took my mom to the one in San Bernardino, for her birthday. She was amazed at all the fruits and veggies she loved the yogurt and i think she tried every soup there was. She told all of her church members that have never been there. So i end up picking her up for lunch every 2 weeks for lunch at the souplantation. My Mom passed away, but I still go there for lunch or dinner every week., now I live in Las Vegas and the first thing I looked for was a souplantation Ifound one and I am a happy camper.I really love the idea .

  5. I enjoy eating here everytime I go to Albuquerque. We don’t have one where we live in Roswell, N.M. Great place to eat.

  6. Me and my daughter love to eat at Sweet Tomatoes. I love this blog & the helpful hints on how to get more fruits & veggies into your diet.

  7. Your restaurants are not healthy at all. Unless you totally choose an undressed baked potato and fresh raw fruits and vegetables, everything else is way beyond healthy because it is WAY too high in fat. Leave the added fat out of everything.

    I wish you’d talk to some real nutritionists e.g., Jeff Novick or Bryanna Clark Grogen, or Joel Fuhrman or Rip Esselstyn-the list goes on. Yet you continue to false advertise how healthy you are and continue to use nutritionists who obviously haven’t a clue about health and healthy food.

  8. Thanks for sharing some of your recipes. I would LOVE your black bean soup recipe. Any chance of getting it?

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