Rebecca Wirtz of Middlesex Township has decided that peer pressure can be a healthy thing. As her peers' lives got busier, she noticed they tended to make less healthy choices.

The realization led her to co-found a group called Nurturing Naturally. As part of the group, ladies gather to share and learn how to make healthy choices relating to food and health.

"I think women today desire to eat healthy but because of their busy lives feel it's easier to just grab a jar of sauce and a box of spaghetti at the grocery store," said Wirtz, 36, a social worker by trade.

"We make eating healthy convenient, cost-efficient and fun," said Ruth Ann Bowen of Penn Township, the group's other founder.

Like Wirtz, the 43-year-old Bowen has children in school. Since May, other mothers have joined the duo to focus on holistic living.

The group meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays each month at Glade Run Presbyterian Church in Middlesex Township. Wirtz and Bowen lead the group, but often rely on a guest speaker's expert advice on topics like organic food or whole milk.

Members share trips to a dairy farm for weekly whole milk purchases, pull together orders for natural products online and exchange information through a Facebook site.

On Tuesday they hosted a forum on packing healthy school lunches. Wirtz researched and presented the nutritional aspects of the lunch while Bowen presented ways to pack them in an eco-friendly way. Ten women attended.

Wirtz opened the meeting by asking about the most common items in lunches. Responses included Go-Gurts, chewy granola bars, fruit cups with juice, Lunchables and fruit snacks. She then went over the nutritional value of those staples and showed how they all contained high amounts of high fructose corn syrup and sugar.

Her main point was for parents to avoid the high fructose corn syrup found in many processed foods.

"It's not natural, it is not healthy and foods with it won't give our kids the energy they need to finish their day strong," she said.

A discussion of healthy sweeteners followed in which she recommended products made with stevia, xylitol and sucanat, an unrefined cane sugar.

Wirtz gave several tips to help moms pack healthy lunches that included allowing enough time to pack in advance.

Wirtz also noted the look of the lunch can be a factor in how the child responds.

"Make it colorful. Include several different color fruits and veggies: green, yellow, red, blue, purple and orange. If it looks fun, it is more likely to get eaten," she said.

Wirtz is also an advocate of water only as the lunch beverage of choice.

"When children fill up on sugary drinks they may not have room for more nutritious choices. Sodas deplete the body of much needed calcium," she said. "The lunch we pack for our kids is the only fuel they will have for the entire afternoon."

Bowen tackled the ways to pack a lunch, touching on what to wrap the food in and ways to carry the lunches.

Those included using unbleached wax paper bags for packaging as opposed to plastic bags. Her eco-friendly tips included purchasing lunch foods in larger containers instead of single-serve packs, cutting fruits and veggies to avoid wasting an entire piece of fruit or vegetable, using a refillable drink bottle when possible and a cloth napkin instead of paper as well as reusable utensils.

Information on recyclable cloth sandwich wraps as well as reusable eco-friendly lunch packing systems were also discussed.

The leaders both made a healthy granola bar recipe for the group to sample and provided the recipe and a packet of lunch ideas with recipes for those in attendance.

At the conclusion of the presentation, an open discussion was held with the gathering on future topics for the group to address. Upcoming topics will include making homemade tomato sauce, raising chickens and building an eco-friendly house using straw.

<B>WHAT: </B>Nurturing Naturally group<B>WHEN: </B>7 p.m. second and fourth Tuesdays of each month<B>WHERE: </B>Glade Run Presbyterian Church lower level, 1091 Pittsburgh Road, Middlesex Township<B>INFORMATION: </B>http://touchedbynature.wordpress.com/ or Nurturing Naturally on Facebook