March is nutrition month and the goal of this year's campaign is to take the fight out of food.

Portage Clinic community dietician Kerby Sylvester clarifies this means giving Canadians tools to source accurate information about what they eat in order to take the struggle out of making healthy food choices.

She explains almost half of Canadians find their nutrition information online but says not everything found there is accurate, noting it can be easy to be taken by popular ideas and diet fads. She describes ways to evaluate nutritional advice.

"You can ask yourself 'does the information come from personal opinions rather than scientific evidence? Are they trying to sell me something rather than educate me on how to make better food choices? Do the facts sound too good to be true, or do they promise a quite fix? Who runs the website, are the website writers qualified to give nutrition advice?'"

Sylvester adds dieticians are the best resource for information on nutrition.

She shares some tips on healthy eating.

"Consuming a well-balanced diet that does include a variety of foods, colours and textures that provide you with nutrients and nourish and energize your body and brain. Having those regular meal patterns because skipping meals or going long intervals of time in between meals can increase the chances of binging on foods later in the day as well as it can increase our chances of going more toward those processed, convenience foods. Having those regular meal patterns can help us manage our portions at meal time and it can help us arrive at the table feeling hungry and having better control of our appetite. When it comes to what we're eating, incorporating all or at least three of the four food groups at each meal is important."

For more information on this year's nutrition month, as well as featured recipes, fact sheets and recommended nutrition apps, you can visit www.nutritionmonth2017.ca.