Easy Peasy Recipe Searches

 

In 2011, Michelle Obama unveiled the newest in over 100 years of nutrition guides from the USDA – MyPlate. Based on the very recognizable dinner plate and emphasizing making 50% of your meal fruits and vegetables, it’s been widely praised as an improvement over the previous MyPyramid icon. Today, it does even more to help families cope with busy schedules.

The first lady is working in conjunction with five media companies and Pinterest – the online source for all your drooling-over-food-photos needs – to streamline the process of finding healthy, MyPlate-approved recipes. So far, they’ve pinpointed over 3,000 recipes that fall under federal nutrition guidelines for the amounts of fruit, vegetables, protein and grains that you should aim to consume with every meal. We’re thinking this Pinterest search tool will really take off for a few reasons.

PEOPLE LIKE EASY

The MyPlate website is set up to make eating healthier easier. It’s filled with easy-to-digest information for making better choices in the kitchen. Now, busy families will have a go-to source for finding healthy recipes when they don’t have enough time to sift through websites-worth of information: The MyPlate Pinterest page. Pulled from publications including Cooking Light, Eating Well, Real Simple and Food Network, the page boasts recipes for everything from appetizers to entrées. And participating websites will include the MyPlate icon on recipes that meet nutrition guidelines.

MEAL IDEAS, NOT EVERYONE’S FORTE

If you’re a writer, it’s the blank page. For artists, a blank canvas. And if you’re cooking at home, it’s an empty pan, waiting for ingredients. A very intimidating sight if you’re not used to cooking all the time. Michelle Obama herself notes, "As a mom, I know how challenging it can be to think of new meal ideas that your kids will like and that will be good for them.” The MyPlate Pinterest page will be a huge help when it comes to finding recipes that are as delicious as they are healthy without committing to hours-long Internet searches.

WE’RE ALL LOOKING FOR TASTY ALTERNATIVES

The First Lady firmly believes you don’t have to sacrifice taste for health, sort of like we do. As you’ll see after cruising the new MyPlate Pinterest page, there’s a way to enjoy our favorite recipes and make them better for us by simply swapping out ingredients or switching up how they’re prepared. Sometimes that means substituting whole milk with low-fat milk, or butter with soft margarine.