Struggling to get your children to eat well? Let’s get them in the kitchen!
Struggling to get your children to eat well? Let’s get them in the kitchen!
I truly believe that the best way to encourage children to eat better is to get them in the kitchen and to get them cooking. Cooking is a life skill, right? We would never not teach our children to read and write, swim or ride a bike and yet cooking seems to have become a hobby rather than an important life skill. The supermarkets may have hundreds of ready meal options available and foods that can be popped in the oven so no one should starve if they can’t cook but are any of those foods really fulfilling our bodies nutritional needs? Are they giving us and our children the correct daily intake of fruit, vegetables, vitamins, fibre etc….?
When you cook from scratch you are so much more in control of what goes into your food and this is what children need to learn too. When children learn to cook they learn so much more about the foods that they are eating. If they understand more about the foods they are eating then they will naturally learn to make better food choices.
Children are naturally inquisitive, they love to learn and explore and we all know they love to know why! We feed their first for knowledge is so many aspects of their life and food should be no different. Let them explore flavours, let them try new foods and also let them know that it is OK not to like something, it is all part of learning. Fussy eating is a whole other subject but I promise that letting your children get hands on will certainly go a long way to helping. There is nothing more satisfying in any of my classes than when a parent tells me that their children would never have normally eaten something that they have just made in class and yet here they are eating it before they have even made it out the door!
Healthy eating is talked about a lot, children are certainly aware of it but they need to explore healthy foods to really understand the message. I’m not sure that children are even bothered about this message, it’s just another thing that they are being told to do and the message is so mixed. Get them in the kitchen, get them enjoying food prep and watch how much better they will eat. How proud are your children when they come home with yet another piece of their art for your fridge? Even the grumpiest of teenagers loves to come and tell you when they scored a goal in football or what ever they are in to. So let them cook, they will be so proud if you sit down to eat something they have made and I guarantee that they will surprise you with what they will eat when they have made it for themselves.
Don’t be afraid of a little mess when they cook, it all clears up and step out of any OCD comfort zones about everything having to look perfect, let it look homemade, let them chop the vegetables a bit chunkier than you would like, pick the bits of egg shell out of the cake mix and wipe down the flour dust. If time is the issue then maybe set aside one evening in the week or some time on a Sunday afternoon to cook together, maybe even cook as a family, food is supposed to be sociable and what a lovely way to spend some time with your children bonding over cooking the Sunday roast or baking some cupcakes.
This is such a massive subject and this short blog only scratches the surface on the importance of getting children to cook but please do get in touch for help, tips and advise on how you can get your children involved in the kitchen.
This guest blog was kindly written by Carol Lumbard of Cookies Kitchen and she is also offering half price taster session, please contact her for more details.
http://www.cookieskitchen.co.uk 07786271227