Healthy Eating for Kids - Avoid Childhood Obesity4 Top Tips for Making More Time For Healthy Cooking:Tuesday 14 July 2009
1. Prepare meals in advance: There is nothing easier than coming home, grabbing a tub of pre-prepared food out of the fridge or the freezer, popping it in the oven or the microwave for a few minutes and before you can say "I haven't got time" Dinner is served. Meals prepared in bulk batches or easy 'boil in the bag' style preparations can ensure fresh, home cooked and healthy fare throughout the week without spending hours in the kitchen every day after work. Check out some of the recipes later in this book for some great ideas that will not only go down well with the kids but also take no longer than 5 minutes to get on the plate! Batch cooking with a large slow cooker (see tip No. 4) or a stock pot (or even just a large saucepan) soups, stews, casseroles or even big trays of lasagnes or mousakas will feed your family for almost all of the working week and actually preparing the food can be relatively hands off, Sunday afternoon activity with a large slow cooker. 2. Don't be afraid of tins! We eat a lot of tinned and pre-packaged food, and we don't compromise our health in doing so. It doesn't have to be a 3 course feast every day, it just needs to be low in saturated fats and salt and nutritionally appropriate. Baked beans are a winner with just about everyone (except me I must confess - the thought of bean juice running into my other food makes me quiver) and full of fibre - just go for the low in salt and sugar variety. From fruit and veg to fish (sardines, mackerel, tuna, prawns and crab meat), tinned food can provide a surprisingly varied selection of good healthy food. Just avoid the processed stuff like ravioli and macaroni cheese which can often be high in fats, salts and sugars. In our house we love our tinned mixed beans and lentils which go down a treat with a bit of grilled chicken or turkey - Packed full of protein and vitamins. And if that wasn't enough, tinned food can be very cheap to buy, so you'll be saving yourself time and money. 3. The freezer section is cool! Frozen does not mean unhealthy. We think of fresh food as wholesome, healthy and unbeatable but the reality is that some frozen vegetables can actually be healthier than their fresh, supermarket shelved cousins! As soon as a vegetable is picked, it begins to lose both flavour, natural sweetness and most importantly, it's nutritional value. Think about the journey from the field where it was grown, on the truck to the shop, into some storage area and finally onto the shelves. It can often be days or even weeks until you finally get around to preparing it yourself. On the other hand, frozen vegetables are harvested, prepared and frozen relatively quickly, thereby retaining much more of their nutrients inside so please don't think of frozen fruit and veg as nutritionally inferior because quite often the opposite is true. With this in mind, there are fewer quick meal preparation techniques than grabbing a handful of mixed veg from the freezer and dropping it into a saucepan for a few minutes. Paired with some grilled or steamed fish or poultry or even cold leftover meat from the fridge this is easy, super-fast, cheap, delicious and healthy. 4. Slow cooking for fast meal prep. One of the most used gadgets in our house is the 'Slow Cooker' otherwise known as a crock pot. This baby is responsible for 2 or 3 fantastic meals a week, takes no time at all and pretty much guarantees clean plates. There are absolutely loads of different meal combinations you can rustle up with this (check out some of our family favourites like Daddy's Famous Chilli Con Carne and Mum's (not so famous) Spag Bol in the recipe chapter). You can virtually drop your ingredients into the pot, set it to auto and leave it to cook for 6 to 8 hours and you end up with a delicious meal. Not only is it easy to do but it's a money saver too. Even the cheaper cuts of meat come out meltingly tender. You can stick a whole roast chicken or joint of meat in your slow cooker, no stock, nothing, just the meat, turn it on and get the hell out of the kitchen - That's it! Then you only need return to it when it's cooked (or the smell of perfectly roast chicken can no longer be ignored). If you prepare your ingredients the night before then all you need to is crank up the pot in the morning, go to work or do whatever you need to do for 8 hours of the day, pick the kids up from school and serve it up! Believe me - With a slow cooked meal on the go, you will have mouths watering the moment they walk through the door or wake up from their afternoon nap. You won't be needing to convince them to eat what you produce with one of these. In fact, you'll probably find that your kids (even the fussy ones) will look forward to 'slow cook' days and you'll have saved a packet of money and time in the process. For a family of four you'll need at least a 3lt pot and I've seen these around for under £15 on Amazon, in Argos, etc. With one of these you'll easily be able to prepare enough food for lunch the next day too. For serious batch cooking go for a 5-6lt cooker and you'll have enough room to make a low fat curry that will last all week in the fridge and just need reheating at tea times. Remember, you can freeze portions of whatever you prepare into individual freezer bag portions and simply take them out the night before you want them and defrost in the fridge ready for the following day. So having little time to prepare meals is no excuse when it comes to putting healthy food in front of your kids and with these tips you can make sure that it doesn't cost the earth and they'll really enjoy it.
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