The holiday season doesn't have to feel like a downward spiral when it comes to eating and feeling great. Healthy can be fun and easy. Check out this inspiring round-up of some of our favorite healthy holiday tips! 

Choosing Nontoxic Holiday Gifts for Children, by Beth Messersmith
Last-minute holiday shopping for the kids in our lives can be stressful. We want to make sure we give them gifts that they’ll love and that are also good for them. Unfortunately, outdated toxics regulations don’t make it any easier on parents trying to find safe, nontoxic gifts that we can feel good about giving. According to Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, there are more than 80,000 chemicals on the marketplace, very few of which have ever been tested for safety.

Tasty Holiday Recipes from Around the Web, by Migdalia Rivera. We've compiled a Storify with 40+ featured recipes, perfect for the holidays and beyond. We hope you'll take the time to visit and sample a few! 

Rituals: Why I Love Them & Why They Matter, by Renee Trudeau
Recently my extended family got into a bit of a heated mess around a long-time Christmas giving tradition and how best –or even why— we should carry it out. It really crystalized for me how key these touchstones are for me and my family. Rituals and traditions are what give life meaning. They connect us to humanity and to ourselves. They are powerful and necessary anchors in the world. We all crave sacredness and ritual in our everyday lives — and not just around birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, and weddings. Rituals can be both carefully planned events and casual but regular remembrances...

Poinsettias Can Get HOW Tall? And other fun facts and tips for growing holiday plants! by Karen Showalter 
It’s easy to make your holiday greenery look great, even if this is the only time of year when you attempt to grow plants. Here are some tips on a few holiday favorites: trees, Poinsettias, Amaryllis and evergreen decorations (wreaths, etc.)... 

5 Tips for a Healthy Holiday Season, by Migdalia Rivera
With the holidays quickly approaching, it's time to make plans! If you're like my family, your holidays center around food, mainly meat. (We love our pernil!) This year I want to have a more humane and healthy holiday by making sure I purchase antibiotic-free meat. But, I want to go further than that and that's why I'm following these 5 Tips for a Healthy Holiday Season...

My Game Plan to Protect Kids from Junk Food this Holiday Season, by To-Wen Tsang
Every so often, I feel that I’m fighting against the whole world just to protect my child from junk foods. But I cannot be the food police around him 24/7. That “leftover Halloween candy” reminds me that, for this upcoming holiday season, I need a game plan to protect my little one from junk food. This is what I’m going to do...

Say “No” to Holiday Stress, by Beth A. Collins Sharp
What’s the best holiday gift I have ever received? Not having to do the whole holiday thing... Welcome to the holiday season, an annual test of endurance for many women. Forget the walking machine for a cardiac stress test — just strap a monitor on most any woman during the week before Thanksgiving or Christmas... 

Ten Holiday Gifts that Support Paid Sick Days, by Sara Alcid
Make your holiday shopping REALLY count! By supporting businesses that support paid sick days, you’re giving the gift of family economic security back to your community and using your consumer power to recognize business leaders who champion the issues we care about, like paid sick days and paid family and medical leave...

What's Fuglier than an Ugly Christmas Sweater? by Migdalia Rivera
Television shows that are cancelled abrubtly, food deserts, Monday Mornings...just some of the things we can't stand during the holiday season!

Gun Safety During the Holidays: Ask to keep your children safe! by Sara Smith
A friend recently shared what happened last year during a holiday visit to her parents’ house. While looking for medicine to soothe a headache, she opened a drawer and found a loaded, unsecured gun. As the mother of two young children, she was shocked that her parents would have left a loaded gun in a drawer within reach of her curious children...

Join us on the Good Food Force in 2016, as we share tips and strategies for building healthy schools and communities.