The American Heart Association of Greater Nashville is encouraging people to eat and tweet their healthy meals today, on National Eating Healthy Day at #NashEatHealthy. Courtesy: Pixabay

November 4, 2015

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Before you pick up your fork today, the American Heart Association of Greater Nashville wants you to pick up your camera or smartphone to document your meal – if it is healthy – on social media.

Today is National Eating Healthy Day, and Michele Money-Carson, vice president for communications and marketing with the association’s Greater Southeast affiliate, said the association hopes that the photo-journaling campaign will inspire others to make healthy choices or even inspire new healthy meal ideas.

“We’re just really encouraging people to just take this day and say, ‘This is the day I’m going to start eating better,’ ” she said. “What better way to hold people accountable than to take a picture of what you’ve eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner or snacks and put it out there on social media?”

Money-Carson said you can document your healthy meals, snacks or any exercise you do today and tweet them with the hashtag #NashEatHealthy. To improve the health of your meals, nutritionists recommend you reduce sodium content, increase the intake of fruits and vegetables, decrease saturated and trans fats and opt to cook at home.

Money-Carson said Tennesseans are joining the rest of the country with an increased interest in eating healthy at home and when they are out.

“People are out and about, they are really going out of their way now to try and find a healthy option,” she said, “so we’re hoping it will inspire people to do the same and give people ideas of some healthy meals that they can eat.”

According to the State of Obesity Report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as of 2014 Tennessee’s obesity rate is 31 percent and the state has the 14th highest obesity rate in the country. In 2010, the latest data available, there were almost 400,000 cases of heart disease in the state, with 1.9 million cases estimated by 2030 if the trend continues.

Tennessee health information from the report is online at stateofobesity.org.

Stephanie Carson, Public News Service – TN