Kids In The Kitchen
Healthy Eating
The easiest way to get your children interested in healthy food is to engage them at the earliest age.
Beverley Glock, founder of children's cookery company Splatcooking.com has these tried and tested tips for introducing your children to a culture of good food.
Take the children shopping
Take your kids to the market or supermarket and play games as you go round. Good ones include naming as many fruit and vegetables as they can or finding a fruit or vegetable which is yellow or begins with 'c'. Then allow them to choose one different fruit and vegetable each week which they will take home, help prepare and cook - the rule being that they have to try it.
Involve them wherever you can.
A great first cookery lesson is making cakes or biscuits. If you must, buy a packet mix which they can choose themselves. You could even buy ready-made plain fairy cakes and make up some glace icing which the children can use to decorate the cakes themselves. However, it's better to make things from scratch so your children can help you weigh the ingredients and break the eggs!
Let children help you prepare meals.
Toddlers love shelling peas; you may get more on the floor than in the colander but it will keep them amused for hours. Take them fruit and vegetable picking and then they can clean the fruit and vegetables and eat what they've picked for lunch or dinner. Nothing tastes better than freshly-picked strawberries and it helps children realise that apples really do grow on trees, especially when they can eat them straight from the tree.
Let them loose with cookery books
Allow them to choose a recipe to make with you. If your kids are too young to read they can have lots of fun looking at the pictures and choose something that way.
Allow them to cook on their own
(Not with sharp knives or hot utensils)! Even if they make a mess and the finished result isn't aesthetically pleasing, the child has done it themselves and it'll boost their confidence. Remember, children and floors are washable! Sit on your hands and button your lips, they may not do it the way you would but you're not making it - they are.
