As we send our children back to school, we urge parents and school officials to take seriously the nutrition lessons learned over the summer through the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project.

Make breakfast an important meal. Don’t just rush out of the house with a granola bar. Go to bed early enough so you can get up early enough to enjoy your mornings and eat a proper, fitting meal that will decrease your appetite through the day.

At lunch, don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. Think “hara hachi bu” and eat until you are 80 percent full. If you can manage to put on your plate that amount, good.

Meat is OK to eat but perhaps consider that it isn’t needed at every meal, or, for that matter, every day. Eat less meat and opt instead for fruits, vegetables, pasta, salad, beans, nuts and other alternatives. At first reducing meat intake seems difficult when planning meals, but keep at it and soon you will be surprised by the taste combinations available.

Sugar? Salt? It seems everything we snack on has those two taste choices. Try giving your taste buds something else. For that matter, when you pick food or prepare food, consider how much sugar and salt are stuffed into the food item. Instead of a cookie in your child’s lunch, try a bunch of grapes. They are sweet on their own.

Nutrition doesn’t have to be boring if you just take this stance: Healthy food tastes better.

Many Americans have listened to their taste buds and discovered it to be true.