Before you start cooking with kids, teach your kids the meaning of cleaning and make sure they fully understand what cleaning means. Take two dishes—plates or saucers—exactly alike. Have one clean and the other soiled with butter or some well-known substance like jam, ketchup or gravy. Ask your kids the difference between them. One is clean and one dirty.
Q: What substance is on one that hinders your saying it is clean?
A: Butter.
Q: What else could be on it?
A: Jam.
Q: What else?
A: Ketchup.
Q: What else?
A: Dust.
Q: What else?
A: Gravy.
Now instead of telling the name of the particular substance in each case, let us try to find one name that will apply to all of the substances which, as you say, make the dish dirty. Let us give these substances a name which will show that they do not belong to the plate. We may call each of them a foreign substance.
Q: And if I take the substance off the plate what am I doing to the plate?
A: Cleaning it.
Q: Then what is cleaning?
Cleaning is removing a foreign substance.
(Excerpts and recipes used with permission from the book "Cooking with Kids" by Maya Gavric)
Lack of time for adequate food preparation of homemade and fresh food is one of the primary structural barriers for healthy eating.
Eating what’s fast and ready, and easy access to prepared food and junk food, is another reason for our bad eating habbits.
Preparing a healthy diet takes time and usually school and work schedules interfere with our wishes, but we can try to dedicate enough time to teach our kids to prepare healthy food.