stoneyfield yogurt educates moms about food dangers (w/giveaway)

last week, i had a great opportunity to eat lunch at a fabulous restaurant downtown (with childcare!!!), thanks to stoneyfield yogurt.

we weren't there just to have a fun time, however, even though it was fun to see so many of my blogging friends again. robyn o'brien was the featured speaker for the day. if you haven't heard of her, she is known as food's erin brokovich because of her book, the unhealthy truth: one morether's shocking investigation into the dangers of america's food supply--and what every family can do to protect itself. she is also the founder of allergykids.

i have been trying to avoid hearing about or learning about the dangers of food. we are just not in a place to be able to afford a complete overhaul to our grocery budget by switching to all organic and farm-raised.

unfortunately, lilianna has suffered almost non-stop from outbreaks of eczema. her case is very similar to the eczema that tessa dealt with when she was a baby. i have long wondered if it was possible that lilianna's eczema could be food related, specifically dairy.

robyn o'brien's journey began when she found out that her daughter was allergic to eggs after a very scary allergic reaction. this led robyn to ask, "how can something so basic to our diets suddenly be causing so many allergic reactions?"

she started using her gifts and abilities as an analyst to look into the statistics and figures of the farming industry to understand what has made our foods so unhealthy. what she discovered has disturbed her and sent her on a crusade, not just to inform moms and others about the dangers and risks, but, hopefully, to make changes at the government level so that we can feel better about the food we feed our kids.

in the meantime, here are a few of the tips that robyn gave to help us keep our kids healthy.

1) find a friend. if you find that you have to defend your actions and choices to a wide variety of people, it will get more and more difficult to make those choices. if you have a friend who will join you in your mission, you will have the support you need to deal with any opposition you encounter.

2) don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. if you feel like you have to be perfect, you may not even try. robyn recommended an 80/20 kind of goal. try to give your kids healthy choices 80 percent of the time and don't worry about the 20 percent of the time that they are subject to food offered by other people. start small and do your best.

3) no one can do everything but everyone can do something. focus on taking baby steps to make healthy lifestyle choices for your family. even just one choice for the month is better than nothing. once that become routine and habit, you can make another change for the next month.

robyn said that to get her kids to eat healthier yogurt (that wasn't blue!), she first gave them better yogurt with sprinkles in it. even though the sprinkles had artificial colors, she felt like she was transitioning to a better choices for her family. soon her kids liked the taste enough to eat the yogurt without the sprinkles.

even though stoneyfield was barely mentioned during the luncheon, i appreciate their safe farming practices. this is their mission: we’re committed to healthy food, healthy people, a healthy planet and healthy business. they started out making yogurt as a fundraiser for their safe farming school. it became so popular they were soon marketing their products across the country.

i really liked their yobaby yogurt, especially the yogurts that come with vegetable purees. this was a great way for lilianna to get a variety of vitamins and nutrients. and she loved to eat them! i have to admit that this is one of our baby steps that we have taken, trying to give the kids healthier yogurt options.

i really hope that the government will start to make changes to the food industry so that people of all income levels can afford healthy options for children. in that way, education will be secondary, because all the options will be healthy options.

let's go america...feed our kids healthy foods.

if you want to give stoneyfield a try and begin to take some baby steps to healthy eating, i'm happy to have the opportunity to offer a gift bag to one of you readers. just leave a comment below telling me one baby step you want to make for healthy eating. i will choose a winner using random.org on august 15.

i was invited to the luncheon by stoneyfield for the purposes of sharing this information with you. all information that i received, plus the lunch, the childcare and a gift bag of my own came from robyn o'brien and stoneyfield yogurt. regardless, the thoughts and opinions expressed here are purely my own.