Healthy Eating Month Interview with Laurel Brooke Erilane

Laurel Brooke Erilane
Profession: Yoga Instructor, Graphic Designer & Event Producer
Location: Los Angeles

Q: What does healthy eating mean to you?
Food is life’s energy. I believe healthy eating is about finding a balanced diet of whole foods. I try and eat all the colors of the rainbow and as much “living” foods as possible. This has a lot to do with where foods are grown, sourced, and prepared. Avoiding pre packaged, artificial flavoring and proceeded foods alone can improve your well being. Healthy eating is about consciously moderating the amount of food you intake and paying attention to the nutrients of everything you put into your mouth and how they affect your body energetically.

Why do you think it is important for children to learn about healthy eating?
As a child you are setting the foundation of your eating habits. If you are raised eating lots of fruits and veggies, you will most likely continue to eat them from the rest of your life. You develop your taste buds at an early age, so why not give children the knowledge and understanding of good clean foods early on. The more we support healthy eating habits for our youth, the less we have to worry about their health problems in our future.

What can we do to urge children to choose healthy options?
Children are very open and free spirited. They will try anything once. If you limit them to only healthy food choices, they will never make a wrong choice. Allow children to be involved in the process of preparing and picking out foods. Bring snacks that they are used to eating when you go out with them and avoid processed sugar. Encourage the local school systems to offer only nutritional food on campus so you don’t have to worry about what they eat when you are not there to guide them.