Healthy cooking with children is important. Helping a child learn to cook, prepare her own meals and get the health benefits out of foods will encourage the child to make healthy choices throughout her day. Cooking with children requires patience and effort on the part of the adult, but teaching children healthy cooking techniques will have lifelong benefits.
Basics
Kids who learn how to flavor and season foods in healthy ways will have lower caloric intake and nutritionally beneficial diets. TLC Cooking website reports that children who eat a diet that is unhealthy and lacking in nutrients will be more likely to perform poorly in school. It also provides a foundation for their future food choices.
Caution
It is important to take time to teach children how to remain safe while cooking. KidsHealth suggests that kitchen rules be established prior to children beginning cooking. Children also need to be taught the proper way to hold a knife, how to work around a stove and how to deal with a fire if one should start. Taking these precautions will help to ensure that a child's cooking time results in a positive experience that he will want to engage in again in the future.
Steps
Pick recipes that are easy enough for your child's age and development. Provide children with the proper cooking attire, such as a special apron. Talk to kids about how to cook raw meat and the importance of washing their hands and counters thoroughly.
Make sure the children know that they are not supposed to cook without adult supervision. Do not become upset if everything doesn't go smoothly. It is a process and everything takes time. Make sure you have all the ingredients ahead of time. Take time to prep the space. Pre-measure hard-to-measure items, especially with young children. When cooking, give children specific tasks such as stirring or dumping ingredients into the bowl.
Specifics
Healthy cooking means that you will be using certain ingredients and limiting the use of other ingredients, such as sugars and unhealthy fats like butter. Ingredients that should be used in healthy cooking include abundant amounts of vegetables, lean meats, whole-grain flour, whole-grain pasta, oats, whole-grain bread, brown rice and lean proteins. Use oils like canola and olive that are abundant in poly- and monounsaturated fats, and lower in saturated fat. Talk about the health benefits of the ingredients you are cooking with, and how using a range of colors, like red peppers, blueberries and green spinach, will add nutrients to your child's diet. Discuss why you substituted healthier ingredients for some of the less healthy ingredients found in some of recipes.
Considerations
A kid should be involved in the entire cooking process from time to time. This will teach him how to pick healthy meals and select healthy and organic ingredients. Allow him to pick a healthy meal once a week that he wants to cook. It can be any meal of the day. Then have him figure out what ingredients are available in the house and what he needs to buy at the grocery store. Take him to the grocery store every week to get the necessary ingredients. Finally, help him prepare his weekly meal. Make sure that these tasks are fun and do not put too much responsibility on the child to get everything right. Adults should be subtly checking to make sure the child has done everything correctly. Let the child enjoy his healthy meal with his family.
Member Comments