Better Health – Healthy Steps
Better Health supports families to make healthier choices and to eat better and move more. It exists to motivate and enable the nation to enjoy better health. It is an ally for all of us, encouraging and supporting us to take steps to improve our physical and mental health. Small steps make a big difference. Take your first one now.
With this goal in mind, they have launched their Healthy steps programme.
Healthy Steps is a new 8-week programme of emails from Better Health that encourages families to take steps to improve their health and wellbeing. With a particular focus on lower income families with children aged 5-11, the programme covers nutrition and physical activity, along with helpful tips on making mealtimes easier and more fun, especially if you’re dealing with fussy eaters.
Better Health is designed to help people make positive changes for their health. Whether they want to lose weight and get active, boost their mood, quit smoking or keep their family healthy, Better Health has something to help everyone.
Better Health was created by the Office of Health Inequalities and Disparities, part of the Department of Health and Social Care.
Parents/carers can sign up at any time by completing a quiz about their current eating and physical activity habits. Once they’ve completed the quiz they will receive weekly emails on one of these themes, tailored to their quiz results:
• Reducing sugar
• Eating 5 a day
• Meal planning
The content in the emails will then provide families with simple ways to take steps towards healthier behaviours.
As part of the programme, families are set goals or tasks to complete every other week, such as swapping out sugary fizzy drinks, or adding fruit or veg to their breakfasts.
Regular feedback points give families the opportunity to celebrate their successes and continue to make positive changes.
To sign up to the Healthy steps programme please follow the link below:
Better Health have teamed up with Disney to help get kids active throughout the holidays. Using some of their favourite characters from Disney’s Encanto and Frozen, Disney and Pixar’s Lightyear and Marvel’s The Avengers, they will be inspired to be more active whilst having fun throughout the summer and beyond.
They have also provided a children’s healthier eating toolkit, which contains 10 different activities to help you support families to make positive changes to their diet, with a particular focus on making healthier swaps.
The activities are easy to run with children aged 4 to 11, requiring minimal preparation and no expert knowledge. It’s perfect for use in a range of settings with children and young families, such as children’s centres, libraries, leisure centres, breakfast and after-school clubs, and other similar locations.
The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) recommends that children have at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. This can be achieved by one daily session or through shorter bursts of 10 minute activity. The 10 Minute Shake Up games help to make this recommendation more manageable. Through playing these games, kids will build skills and grow in confidence, and most importantly, have fun!
Also available for your use is the NHS Food Scanner app which brings food labels to life and helps you make healthier choices. Simply scan the barcode to see how much sugar, saturated fat and salt is in your food and drink then choose one of the healthier swap suggestions.
Make sure you download the app so you can see how it works and test out the new swaps and augmented reality (AR) features:
Why is this important now?
The rising cost of living means life is still tough for families. At the same time, childhood obesity
remains a problem that must be tackled urgently.
Recent research from sources like the Office for National Statistics and the Food Standards
Agency highlight concerns about the cost of food, particularly from households with children.
From our own research we also know that in many cases families know what healthy means, but
they need help with making changes.
Healthy Steps is budget-conscious throughout, featuring inexpensive food ideas that use easily available ingredients and can be made quickly.
The “Top tips to keep your family healthy and happy” leaflet includes simple tips to help families eat well and move more.
