Need a fun, engaging, and interactive way to help your child develop an awareness of how to differentiate between eating healthy and nutritious foods versus junk foods and foods that just aren’t that great for you?

Try Pick Chow! It’s an online interactive game that lets kids create their own plate of food by dragging and dropping food from different foods groups onto a plate, that itself happens to be divided up into 5 different sections, one for each food group.

The object of the game is to fill up your plate with the right combination of foods so that you end up with what is known as a “5 star meal” – or a meal that is well-balanced and healthy, consisting of the right food choices from the “meat and beans” group, the “dairy” group, the “fruit” group, the “vegetable” group, the “grains and starchy veggies” group, and dessert.

A series of meters move up and down, between a red zone (unhealthy) and a green zone (healthy), that represent the quantity of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, fiber, sugar, saturated fat, and sodium on your plate, relative to the recommended portion size for that meal. Your goal is to make sure that each of these meters stays in the green at all times.

This game helps the child put each meal into perspective, by being able to visualize how their plate might actually look if the selected foods were chosen to fill the plate. You even have the option to click on foods and see all of the nutrition information for each, as well as a quick fun fact about the food.

What is fascinating about this game is that while it is aimed at children, even diet-conscious adults, particularly those who are trying to eat healthy and lose weight, can greatly benefit from this tool. If you are planning a healthy meal for yourself but aren’t sure what to eat, you can create a mock-up of your actual meal and gauge for yourself whether you are able to keep each of the meters in the green.

If you are able to successfully create a “5-star meal”, then you are a winner!