Happy October!
Hope you are ready for cooler weather and more great education tools.
A new Member Dashboard. Your libraries, videos, recipes, calculators, health calendar, linked handouts, and this newsletter now live together in one home base.
Faster searching. The Handout Library and the PowerPoint Library each now have a search box. We added and refreshed hundreds of handouts, bringing the collection to more than 1700 for October.
More PowerPoint shows, across many new categories. They are searchable, and you can see them in each category, too.
Eight new health calculators, built just for members: BMI, calorie needs, hydration, blood pressure, cholesterol, a heart risk score, the CDC Prediabetes Risk Test, and a MyPlate daily score.
Your October toolkit is below. We hope you are ready for fall.
Cheers!
Judy
PS Have a comment, request, or question? Email me!
Preview This Month
This Month’s Articles
Fall is a favorite time of year for local produce! You get the tail end of summer plus a whole new batch of squash, apples, and pears coming into season!
A recently published large data analysis in the open-access journal BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health finds that eating more beans and soy foods may help reduce the chance of developing high blood pressure.
This Month’s Recipes
Fall Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner
Fall chicken sheet pan dinner - spicy tomato sauce with garlic, maple syrup, olive oil, paprika, cumin and Korean pepper drizzled over chicken and butternut squash. Baked to perfection then topped with steaming lima beans, arugula, and red cabbage. Topped with lemon or lime.
Ingredients
- 6 chicken thighs, boneless, skinless
- 3 cups frozen cubed butternut squash
- 4 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 pinch Korean pepper
- 1/2 tsp crushed garlic
- 3 cups lima beans, steamed
- 3 cups arugula
- 1 cup chopped red cabbage
- 1 lemon or lime
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
- Cover a sheet pan with foil
- Top the sheet pan with chicken thighs and the butternut squash cubes.
- Stir the tomato paste, garlic, oil, maple syrup and seasonings well. Pour over the chicken and squash.
- Bake for 40 minutes or until done.
- While the chicken is baking chop the cabbage. Steam the beans in the microwave, covered, the last 5 minutes of the chicken baking.
- Top the pan of chicken with the steaming lima beans, arugula, chopped cabbage, and lime juice.
Nutrition Facts
Calories
491Fat
12 gSat. Fat
2 gCarbs
53 gFiber
14 gNet carbs
39 gSugar
13 gProtein
47 gSodium
297 mgCholesterol
161 mgDid you make this recipe?

Fall Apple Salad
This salad is rich in fall flavor and color. We love the crunch from the apples, toasted walnuts, and red cabbage. Best of all it will refrigerate for a day.
Ingredients
- 2 apples cored and diced, peel on
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tsp minced garlic
- black pepper to taste
- 2 tablespoons rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar
- 4 cups arugula
- 2 cups shredded red cabbage
- 2 tablespoons toasted walnut pieces
Instructions
- Toss all ingredients together. Serve immediately or hold in refrigerator up to one day.
Nutrition Facts
Calories
132Fat
7 gSat. Fat
1 gCarbs
18 gFiber
4 gNet carbs
14 gSugar
12 gProtein
2 gSodium
19 mgCholesterol
0 mgDid you make this recipe?
From The Blog:
Ready-to-print nutrition worksheets for every age group: kids MyPlate activities, adult worksheets, and a full MyPlate teaching workbook. Download the free PDFs and use them in your next lesson.
A plain-language guide to the new 2026 food pyramid, how it compares to MyPlate, and what it means for your lessons. Includes a free printable handout in English and Spanish.
A dietitian-made low-sodium food list you can download, print, and hand out: the best low-sodium foods by group, plus a simple label-reading guide.
Functional foods can provide meaningful health benefits beyond basic nutrition. Consider fermented items such as kefir or sauerkraut, which deliver live probiotics that support gut health, or colorful berries that supply a concentrated source of antioxidants and phytochemicals. Making functional foods a regular part of your daily eating pattern is a practical and effective strategy to support digestion, immune function, and long‑term overall health.
MyPlate was the longest-running food guide icon in US history, and a new open-access research report makes the case that its process and resources should guide what comes next. We think every nutrition educator should read it.
People who eat 30 or more different plant foods each week have a more diverse gut microbiome than people who eat 10 or fewer. That is the finding from the Microsetta Initiative at UC San Diego, published in the journal mSystems.
If you've ever wondered why it feels harder than ever to get someone's full attention for a nutrition class, a cooking demo, or even a five-minute conversation about their health — it's not you. It's math.
Here’s a sample comparison chart for popular types of cheese, focusing on calories, saturated fat, and sodium per 1-ounce (28g) serving:
Putting together an engaging and informative cooking demonstration is much harder than it looks. Don't worry, though, because our chefs and presenters have tons of wonderful cooking demonstrations under their belts and share their tips, ideas, guides, and a printable PDF here.
Here is a chart of common animal and plant protein sources, with a few surprises. Plant protein is lower in calories and higher in fiber, and in most cases it costs less. Download the printable PDF handout and the original Excel file so you can make changes.
Anne Linge, RDN, CD, CDE asked if we have any hacks to make coffee healthier... and we were so inspired by her question that we're launching a whole coffee series!
The U.S. federal government has released the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, marking one of the most significant updates to national nutrition guidance in decades. These Guidelines, available through realfood.gov and the official Dietary Guidelines website, put an emphasis on whole, nutrient-dense foods and offer a clear framework for helping people make healthier choices every day.
Free MyPlate handouts, posters, and an interactive Build-a-Plate tool for dietitians, WIC, and schools: everything to teach the healthy plate.
Here are 12 plated salad presentation ideas from a professional chef whose passion is to cook healthy and make a lot of salads.
Cooking Demo Tool Kit:
These 15 strategies for smoother cooking demos are very easy to do and they will make your next one make you feel like a star!
There are many ways to add flavor to tea without sugar, but many people still think of it as a bitter and unpalatable drink. End the misconceptions by demonstrating just how easy it is to make delicious iced tea at home...
White whole wheat flour is super versatile and a real crowd-pleaser. Check out how it adds the perfect whole grain boost to these tasty chicken calzones!
Today I took some of the key messages from one of our most popular posts of all time (Teaching a Cooking Class: Tips and Tricks) and turned them into a colorful infographic for your perusal...
It’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Month, and what better way to celebrate than with a bright new strawberry dessert? Whipped cream, mango puree, and strawberries fresh from the market all come together to make this show-stopping dessert, which is topped with toasted almonds and freshly-chopped mint.
Are you ready to take your cooking demonstrations to the next level? In this post, I detail my cooking demo background and highlight some new ways to help students be creative.
NEW From Our Store:
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Using a portable induction stove for a cooking demo is a great idea. Here are the pros, cons, and success tips.