Nutrition | Beauty Night Society

Eat Right to Feel Good

November 6, 2009 By caroline 1 Comment

On November 27th, we launched our Mom & Tot nutrition program. “Our mission is to provide marginalized women and youth tools to make positive life style choices and heal themselves and our community. Since we value dignity and respect for everyone, we take an innovative approach to educating our participants. There are some wonderful programs out there but ours has the interactive educational component to it.

The pumpkin carving concept of launching this program is one example of how we incorporate education and entertainment in all our programs. Everyone who attended our first session devoured the pumpkin soup and to figure out how we could meet the needs of the community we serve. We had our good meal bag program previously ran at transition homes. Dietician students led by Dietician Heather Lovelace would create a meal, serve it and discuss aspects of nutrition that could benefit each participants’ wellness. After the meal, participants were given the ingredients to recreate the same meal for up to six people.

To bring this program to Vancouver’s DTES, we needed to meet the needs of the participants. One of the key concerns were the lack of kitchen facilities; monies to purchase the ingredients and how to use nutrition for preventative health care. Through the different night’s meals – many that embrace different cultures and nutritional components are presented in a fun way to participants. By educating our participants to become engaged with our programming and actually using the information they learn, we believe it will create a healthy approach to food and life style choices; a great way for the women to bond with their children, break down generational barriers based on poor nutrition and make cooking healthy foods fun.

Beauty Night Society’s Mom & Tot Program Coordinators Alexa Fox and Christie Gray sat down with me to discuss how we could make this program fun and interactive.

Apapting a concept from Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters (Hippy)’s literacy program - by teaching the children, it can strengthen the familly.

This program is great way to involve and engage the community. Little Flower Academy and Churchill Secondary School students’ Foods 12 class are creating recipes for us that can be cooked on hot plates or in a coffee maker. Students who are volunteering to do the research for Beauty Night Society’s Mom & Tot Nutrition Program are developing leadership skills and becoming empowered as the research they develop will have a direct positive impact on someone’s life.

Filed Under: Children's Programming, Healthy Living, Uncategorized Tagged With: alexa fox, beautilicous, beauty night, beauty night society, canada food guide, Christie Gray, churchill secondary school, downtown east side, halloween, Little Flower Academy, mom & tot nutrition program, nutrition

Healthy is Beautiful

November 5, 2009 By Christie 3 Comments

The flu season is upon us, and everyone everywhere is being more aware of their health and staying healthy.
Beauty Night realizes that healthy eating is not about strict nutrition philosophies, staying unrealistically thin, or depriving yourself of the foods you love. Rather, it’s about feeling great, having more energy, and keeping yourself as healthy as possible. Which is one reason we are starting a course for moms and tots teaching healthy recipes that they can prepare with the tools that they have (often only hot plates) and the food that they have avaliable to them. We would love to hear your suggestion of recipes!

Eating poorly conributes to stress and many other side effects, such as:

Blood Sugar Imbalances: When we don’t eat enough food, or don’t eat healthy enough food (too little protein and healthy carbohydrates, too much sugar, etc.) we can experience blood sugar fluctuations. These fluctuations can lead to mood swings, fatigue, poor concentration and other negative consequences in the short term, and greater health problems like hyperglycemia in the long run.
Caffeine Side Effects: Too much caffeine can lead to poor concentration and decreasef effectiveness, sleep disturbances, and increased levels of cortisol in the blood.
Poor Health Outcomes: Poor nutrition can also lead to lowered immunity so you’re more susceptible to illnesses, both minor and major. As you can imagine, this can lead to other problems, including increased stress levels.

We feel that helping our clients make great food choices, they will start to feel amazing and make great life choices as well.

If you can help, please email info@beautynight.org, leave a comment or donate!

Filed Under: Donations/Fundraising, Fund Raising, Healthy Living Tagged With: Healthy Living, nutrition

Children’s programming update!

October 20, 2009 By alexa Leave a Comment

October has been a wonderful kick-off month for our children’s programming!

Programming runs Monday and Wednesday nights, from 6:30-8:30pm, with diverse activities for the children of Beauty Night and Womyn’s Gym participants. We’re really excited about all the fun stuff (face-painting, costume-making…) that we’re going to get to do for Halloween. We also have some great new volunteers, and will be running volunteer training soon!

We are going to be adding a Tuesday program at the end of the month, with the goal of working towards programming Monday-Thursday by the end of the year. Tuesday night is Stroller Disco with Caroline, and we are going to be adding on a Mom and Tot nutrition and cooking class that will follow right after! More details on this class next week!

We are currently looking for craft supplies for the KidzCare program, as well as food donations for our nutrition and cooking class. We are also still looking for KidzCare volunteers – if you like working with children and have a few hours each week, this might be the way for you to get involved in Beauty Night! Please send an email to info@beautynight.org if you have any donations, or are interested in volunteering.

-Alexa Bennett Fox