Minnesota has a long history of working with child care providers to encourage healthy eating and physical activity. Recently, nearly 1,700 family child care providers in Minnesota took part in a Team Nutrition Let’s Move! Child Care Initiative designed to help them set and meet healthy meal patterns.  Each provider completed a Team Nutrition Let’s Move! Child Care Quiz on their family care home’s health and nutrition practices. The Minnesota Department of Education partnered with their eight family day care home sponsor organizations to promote the Initiative.

As a Let’s Move! City, Rancho Cucamonga, California is addressing health and wellness in a holistic and comprehensive way. The City Council incorporated Let’s Move! Cities, Towns and Counties (LMCTC) to be a part of Healthy Rancho Cucamonga (Healthy RC), a comprehensive, community-driven initiative dedicated to encouraging healthy and sustainable lifestyles.

Four years ago, First Lady Michelle Obama launched a national movement, Let’s Move!, to create a healthier future for kids and families. Four years later, Let’s Move! has moved a nation in a healthier direction, and this nation is on the move. This healthier movement is becoming the new norm, and it is happening all over the country. From child care centers through high school and after school, from sun up to sun down, the country is moving faster every day towards a healthier future. Over the last four years, Let’s Move! has worked to create more opportunities for physical activity and to improve the overall quality of school meals. Across the nation, communities have gained access to healthy and affordable food, and families have gained the information needed to make more nutritional choices. Businesses are marketing healthier foods to kids, and consumer demand is shifting toward healthier products.  

Ed. Note: This blog was originally posted on the President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition's website: www.fitness.gov. To view the full post, click here. Today, people from all 50 states will celebrate the 28th Annual National Girls and Women in Sports Day. This year’s theme, “Passing the Torch, Blazing the Trail,” is particularly pertinent because we are two days away from the Opening Ceremonies of the Sochi Olympics. More than 100 of our 230 winter Olympians traveling to Sochi are females; in London in 2012, the U.S. sent more female than male athletes to participate in the Games. In fact, many referred to London 2012 as “the Women’s Olympics,” because it was the first time that women competed in all of the same sports as men, for 302 total medal events.