Adding olive oil to your children's food can provide them with a healthy alternative to many other oils and butters. According to the World's Healthiest Foods website, when a diet rich in olive oil is consumed, it will decrease the chance of cardiovascular disease and keep the heart healthy overall, because olive oil is high in unsaturated fats and polyphenols. Therefore, it can be valuable to add olive oil to your children's healthy foods.
Spinach and Fruit Salad
Get kids to eat a healthy salad by adding sweet fruit to the salad. Take a bag of baby spinach and dump it in a bowl. Then add in a cup full of fresh blueberries, strawberries and bite size slices of apples. Add in almonds or walnuts if your child enjoys the taste of nuts.
Add a dressing of olive oil mixed with fresh lemon juice to taste. This will provide a kid friendly salad that contains significant amounts of fruits and is flavored with an olive oil based dressing. This salad will provide rich amounts of fiber, unsaturated fat and a variety of vitamins and minerals.
Bread Dip
Olive oil can be used as a healthy dip for whole grain breads. Pour olive oil into a small dipping bowl and then add in a small amount of pepper and garlic to suit your child's taste. Cut a load of whole grain bread into slices and half the slices for easy dipping. Then, let your child snack on the whole grain bread slices by dipping them into the olive oil based dip.
Pasta and Olive Oil
Children generally enjoy pasta, but white pastas that are made with refined grains do not provide the healthy nutrients children need. Therefore, it is important when cooking a pasta dish to use whole grain pasta. This will provide your child with necessary healthy fiber and sustainable energy.
Cook the pasta by following the instructions on the box. While the pasta is cooking you can saute the vegetables that will be added to the pasta dish. The vegetables you choose will depend on what your child likes, but some possible healthy vegetables to use include tomatoes, sweet potatoes and spinach leaves. Saute the vegetables in a small amount of olive oil. Then, after the pasta and vegetables are done cooking you can mix them together in a pan and toss in olive oil and garlic to add flavor to the whole grain pasta dish. Make sure all the noodles are coated in olive oil.
Baked Sweet Potato Fries
Make a healthy alternative to fries by using sweet potatoes. Slice the sweet potatoes into a fry shape and cover them with olive oil. Then, spread them evenly on a baking sheet and place them in an oven that has been preheated to 425 degrees F. Bake them in the oven for about 30 minutes and if your children likes them crispier, bake them longer.
According to Fruits and Veggies More Matters website a part of Produce for a Better Health Foundation, sweet potatoes are low in calories and contain zero fat and will provide your child will valuable fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C and potassium.
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