My favorite nutrition podcaster has another bit of newsletter info the other day that surprised me: Plain button mushrooms have more antioxidants than tomatoes, carrots or zucchini!

I love mushrooms more that carrots or zucchini, so that’s not a problem for me, but I know they can be a sticky situation for many kids (and grown ups too).

Luckily, there are some great online resources for getting kids familiar with the wonder that is the mushroom:

• NAMA’s Manual for Teachers and Naturalists They even rent teaching kits; so cool!
• The Great Morel Fun photos of kid shroomers.
• Fun Facts About Fungi Utah State University hosted site includes games, facts and great fast-motion video of growing mushrooms.

And often times play food can help kids get used to new veggies as well. We have a couple types of play-food mushrooms, as well as some other good-for-you veggies like peppers, tomatoes, carrots and more!

Do you have tips for getting kids to eat more veggies? We all want to know!

I get a weekly nutrition newsletter and this week’s held some great information about calcium. We moms have it pounded into our heads we need a lot, so many of us take calcium supplements. But if we’re taking them with iron, we’re wasting our money.

If you take iron and calcium, make sure you don’t take them together. And if you’re trying to get as much calcium as you can from food (and I salute you!), check the food’s iron content. Apparently there are other compounds called oxalates that make calcium not absorbable; for instance, broccoli and spinach are both high in calcium, but spinach has a lot of these oxalates, so the calcium is not as easy for the body to absorb as from broccoli.

My son will be happy I’m not forcing as much spinach on him. Has anyone ever used St. Patrick’s Day to try and get kids to try more green foods? I wonder if that’ll work…