Most of the kid-friendly recipes found online or in the books are packed with sugar, corn syrup, margarine, marshmallows, jello mix, gummy worms, food coloring, candy, hot dogs, salami, industrial cookies, prepared sugar-loaded icings, shortening, and many other not so healthy ingredients. They may teach your kids some kitchen techniques, but they don't give them the wholesome home-made food habits or healthy food knowledge and food decisions for life.
Maya's Secrets to Better Cooking with Kids!
Knowing how to cook wholesome food is a great way to combat obesity, unhealthy habits and lifestyle diseases. Don't settle for fatty, sugar loaded unhealthy, preservative packed meals from the box or fast food restaurants. Start teaching your children how to do shopping for vim and vigor in fresh ingredients they need to use in order to prepare nutritious food for themselves and enjoy health and beauty in future life. When they grow into adulthood, they eventually have to rely on themselves for feeding, including everything else in life. Without skills and knowledge, they may end up sick, obese and unhappy.
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 habits. 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.
Studies have shown that kids who are involved in food preparation and cooking at a young age are more likely to try new healthier foods and easy develop healthier food habbits.
My kid-friendly recipes and Cooking with Kids guide are taking different approach. We think kids need to know cooking basics, measuring, shopping for healthy ingredients, and how to prepare real food from scratch, without unnecessary preservatives or unhealthy additives our body cannot recognize and digest.
DID YOU KNOW?
Most children think cooking is fun, and with a little cooking instruction from our Cooking with Kids guide, and recipes provided, your kids will learn to cook delicious and much healthier food.
(Excerpts used with permission from the book "Cooking with Kids" by Maya Gavric)
"Obesity's dangerous impact:
If you were told your child is at risk for cancer, that would get your attention. If you were told your child is at risk for some sort of brain disease, that would get your attention. Well, obesity ought to be on that list. If we don't succeed in turning this epidemic around, we are going to face, for the first time in our history, a situation in which our children are going to live shorter lives than we do."
(Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH))