Helpful Healthy Eating Form from Health Canada

Our family wasn't eating enough vegetables.  The kids were eating a lot of wheat with cheese.  I was searching for a tool that would help us track our servings and make healthier choices.  By healthy choices I mean a varied diet of grains, vegetables, fruit, meat/protein and dairy.  In other words - the Canada Food Guide.

While I take issue that the Canada Food guide includes dairy as its own complete category and others have concern that there is too much emphasis on grains, its a pretty good starting point for healthy, balanced, sensible diet.

Now how to implement this?  I have, in the past, kept food diaries.  They are a great tool for weight loss but they made me crazy and obsessive about food so I don't think they are very healthy for me.  I figured that a food diary for the kids would equal an eating disorder in their very near future so that wouldn't work for them either.  Health Canada actually had the answer!

These are downloadable charts for different ages.  They have check boxes for the servings of an item you eat. For example:

I find this a very simple way to track what I eat without writing everything down. I'm not finding this to be stressful.  My youngest daughter loves tracking what she eats - she's very mathematically minded so this works for her.  My older daughter doesn't like tracking so she doesn't.

I really like this tool.  It is working well in our family.  What helps keep your family on track with healthy eating?