Food and Health Communications is proud to be a National Strategic Partner for MyPlate. For Labor Day, we are bringing innovative yet easy ways to serve fruits and veggies so that they will make up half of everyone's plates! We have recipes for a Veggie Face Salad, Ice Bucket Fruits, and our best Fresh Fruit Cobbler, among other ideas.

To test my son's hypothesis of satiety for his science fair project, each volunteer ate as much as they wanted until they felt full and the amount was recorded. To ensure that each volunteer was hungry and to avoid bias each volunteer was not allowed to eat 2 hours before the test and the test was recorded at the same time of the day - after school. The results were statistically significant.

My daughter's school principal is requesting ideas for alternative snacks for parents to sendto school to celebrate their child's birthday, rather than the usual cake/brownies, etc. Do you have anyhandouts/suggestions that I could use?

Do you want to serve a creative birthday cake made from sorbet and berries? This one doesn't need batter, baking time, frosting or hours of preparation. It is colorful - made "a la minute" (at the last minute) right at the table. We used chocolate and strawberry sorbet, fresh berries, fresh whipped fat-free cream and vanilla frozen yogurt. The whimsical candles made a nice topping.

The most surefire way to a better appetite is to burn more calories - run, walk, play - limit screen time.

We know it is not so warm everywhere as here so we thought we would share some tropic love and particularly to get ready for Nutrition Month - back to basics - why not develop a love of fruit and learn about new ones!?

One of our subscribers called and requested healthy appetizers for the Super Bowl. We got to work right away on the project and decided to have a little fun with a tapas theme. Tapas means little plates and these dishes originate from many Mediterranean countries. So, we started making many small plates of vegetables and fruit and stored them away.

Our guests were delighted that they were sampling our "super bowl snack fare" - and much to our delight all of the veggies disappeared! Here are three time-saving, calorie-saving holiday entertaining ideas - from Calorie-Free Holiday Tea (great warm or chilled) to a GingerBread house that saved us a lot of time, mess and calories from baking cookies - plus everyone here got to help!

How lucky we were to find quite a few farm stands! Here is a shot of the summer fruit that is from this area: raspberries, peaches, sour and sweet cherries, yellow plums, currant and blueberries.

You see, I like to be clever when serving guests. There is no way I am going to abandon my healthy cooking strategies but there is also no way I want to take out the fantastic flavor and fun factor.