The world is changing fast, and technologies have revolutionized how we cook. We want fast 15-minute meals because we are working a lot. People don't value food as we used to. Keep reading till the end, and we will see fun ways to engage your children into cooking and eating healthy foods.
Obesity Is a Problem
40% of adults in the US are obese, and another 30% are overweight. That means that only an astonishing 30% of the population is a healthy weight that does not translate to any health issues.
It is not only adults but also children age 2 to 5-year-olds that have an obesity rate of 13.9%. Children who have suffered from obesity during their childhood are twice as likely to be obese as adults.
Why do we have such an unhealthy relationship with food? We can go on and talk about fast food, sugary drinks, school meals, and lack of time. But I think that we overlook everything too much. We need to go back to the basics and see what we can do about making simple food for children.
Simple Ingredients
It's happened to us all. We either watch a cooking show on TV, or we saw something that looks nice, and we want to do the same at home. So we go on the computer to check the recipe; only to find a 30 ingredients list with spices we do not have, ingredient names we've never heard of. And we either struggle for hours shopping, finding it, or we don't do it.
Let us aim for a maximum of six ingredients per dish with the spices that we have at home. We should also throw out the old recipe books we never look at and stop watching those over-complicated cooking videos. We are not professional cooks, but we want to cook excellent, healthy, homely food.
Make it Fun for Your Children
Children are curious; they will love a day out to see where chickens come from, or how bread is made. Show your children where the different ingredients come from and meet the local farmers who will be more than delighted to show you around.
You can also go and buy some kitchenware with your children. You can even make a wooden spoon with them. Companies like Fisher Paykel appliances create innovative appliances that might come in handy.
Cook With Your Children
This is the essential part. Gather the ingredients with your children into the kitchen and begin with them starting from washing the potatoes, to cutting the carrots, and warming up the oven.
Make sure they are safe and have their own sets of plastic knives to cut the different vegetables. You can make funny shapes with different plastic molds. You can also cut the carrots into stars or triangles to make it more interesting.
Children should play with food, make it fun. Make a nice colorful plate, with eyes and ears. Let them move the food around their plate if they like or mix up foods. Let your children be creative!
To Sum it Up
People think that children should be out of the kitchen as it's dangerous and it's not the place to be. We believe children should spend more time in the kitchen than they spend sitting down watching TV, for example. Obesity is killing us slowly, and we find it difficult to forge good habits, but we should not transmit our bad habits to our children. Those extra pounds are killing us. Let's not kill our children.
