October is Sports Nutrition Month

Many of our friends have been asking us to continue the special sports months that we ran in April, May and June.*  It seems that our readers love to read the perspectives and opinions, ideas and thoughts of a range of experts on a single topic.

So we conducted an informal, non-scientific poll last month to solicit ideas for a theme for October. With the school year and fall sports season in full swing, what we heard parents wanted most was help in the kitchen and in meal planning.  Many of you told us of the challenges you face every single day in making sure your kids get the nutritious meals and snacks they need to perform at their best in class and during sports after school.

With the cost of food skyrocketing, more and more parents are also finding it difficult to stretch their dollar at the grocery store.  It seems that serving a nutritious breakfast to a family rushing out the door to work and school, making sure the back-packs of today's picky teens are filled with food they will actually eat (!), and finding the time to make a nutritious dinner for them to eat after sports, instead of opting, as do so many time-starved families, for fast-food or convenience foods, has never been harder. 

So, for the month of October, MomsTEAM has invited some old friends and some new ones to huddle with us to offer always on-the-go sports parents fresh ideas for healthy, easy-to-make breakfasts, lunches, dinners and between-meal snacks.  We also thought that you might be interested in learning how the sports dietitians who will be blogging this month got into their chosen fields, so you might think about sharing their stories with your kids.  Who knows, it just might spark an interest in nutrition that could lead some of them into a career in sports nutrition!

To round out our nutrition coverage for October we will also be featuring some of the most popular sports nutrition articles from our nutrition library on the home page and the Nutrition Channel landing page, so I invite you to visit MomsTEAM as often as your busy schedule permits for tips, recipes, and menu ideas.

Hopefully, by the time Halloween rolls around, your kids will have had a full month eating healthy and nutritious food under their belts so that all that candy in their goody bags doesn't ruin our collective efforts to get kids in the habit of eating healthy.  

Better yet, maybe your kids will realize that candy is filled with empty calories and, when they knock on your neighbor's door to say "Trick or Treat," will choose an apple from the bowl instead of a Three Muskateer bar!

For the first blog from MomsTEAM's expert sports nutritionist Nancy Clark, click here. 

*In case you missed our blogs in April, May, and June, here are the links.

April is Youth Sports Safety Month 
May is Sports Moms Month 
June is Sports Dads Month

Is there a topic you would like to see MomsTEAM feature in the coming months? Interested in being one of our guest bloggers or know a nutritionist who you think would be a great addition to our roster of October bloggers? Send an email to editors@momsteam.com. We always love to hear from you!