Food and Nutrition
Home Based Mums Features
Work At Home Mums
Home Based Business Ideas
FabJob Guides 2008
Home Business Kits
Website Development
Crafting
Make Money Writing
Business Ideas For Kids
Mums Life
Features
All About Parenting
Green Parenting/Eco Living
Home and Lifestyle
Beauty and Fashion
Family Travel
Health and Fitness
Food and Nutrition
Home and Garden
Healthy Eating | Meals In a Hurry
Healthy Eating
Healthy eating means eating a variety of foods that will give you the nutrients you need to maintain your health, feel good, and have energy. Nutrients include protein, carbohydrates, fat, water, vitamins, and minerals.
You have heard the old saying ‘you are what your eat’ – well this is largely true. Good nutrition is important for everyone, and what you eat can affect your immune system, your mood, and your energy level.
Healthy eating when combined with being physically active and maintaining a healthy weight, is an excellent way to help your body stay strong and healthy and to help combat illness.
Healthy Eating For Kids
Healthy eating for children means paying attention to their food content specifically when it come to calories, protein, fat saturated fat, added sugar and salt – artificial colourings, flavourings, sweeteners, hydrogenated vegetable oil and added MSG. Also, using proper portion control.
Below we have some great ideas to encourage healthier snacking and treats, helping kids to enjoy snack time treats without supersizing their nutrient intake.
Great Ideas For Kiddies Lunchbox
Variety is the spice even at a young age!
Vary what you give them each day – try bread, rolls, wraps, mini pitta with different tasty fillings.
Fruit and Vegetables
Fruits and vegetables are full of vitamins, minerals and fiber, which are essential to keeping your child healthy. The older they are, the more they need.
Always try to include a small portion or pot of chopped fresh fruit or vegetables which they will enjoy and this will also help towards their five-a-day (about 2 to 4 cups).
Make the food look nice and keep it colorful
Challenge the younger children to try fruits and vegetables of different colors. Make it a red/green/orange day (apple, lettuce, carrot). Have fun by helping your kids to pick one color per day and see how many fruits and veggies of that color you can find.
Wake up with a Breakfast Smoothie
Smoothies are a fabulous way to increase the amount of fruit your family eats and are really easy to make. To make a basic smoothie you just need frozen fruit, some low-fat or fat-free milk and/or yoghurt, and 100% fruit juice, and process all together in a blender until smooth. Let your children experiment with different fruit to find out what they really like.
Healthy summer treat ideas:
Kiddies Exotic Frozen Banana!
How about this simple idea for a lovely low-sugar summer treats for the freezer, designed especially for children.
It’s nothing more than a banana, frozen! Yet this delicious exotic treat is sure to delight (and is especially nice for a child with a sore throat – you can also freeze grapes too)
To make your frozen Banana Pop simply peel a ripe banana and cut it in half.
Push a plastic spoon or lolly pop stick into the cut end and put it in the freezer in a freezer safe dish for a few hours and that’s it!
Or you can go even more exotic and melt some chocolate over the top (choose dark chocolate for less sugar, or good quality diabetic chocolate). If you melt the chocolate and pour it onto a plate then roll the frozen banana in the chocolate it will harden immediately. Yum!
Ref: Book of Sweet Things Sean and Kieran Murphy.
Cool Down With Fruit Popsicles
Fruit popsicles are a favorite all year round and are real easy to make. Just put 100% fruit juice in an ice tray and freeze it overnight. Kids love to eat the frozen fruit cubes as mini-popsicles or put them into their other juices. Also, frozen seedless grapes are perfect for natural mini-popsicles and are a great summer treat.
Vegetable and Cheese Dippers
How about chopping up raw vegetables and cheese into little bite-sized pieces for your kids. Good vegetables to try are carrots, cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, celery and bell peppers. You can let the kids dip their favorites into low-fat or fat-free dressings.
Dip tip: as with all off the shelf dips, sauces and dressings, always read the food label to make sure they are low in saturated fat and salt.
Easy Homemade Raspberry Lemonade (Serves 4 and contains sugar)
Ingredients:
4 lemons
450g fresh raspberries
Few tablespoons caster sugar
1 litre of sparkling water
Delicious, cheap and easy. First zest the lemons and then juice them. Then puree the raspberries with the lemon juice and sugar. Push the raspberry pulp through a sieve, using a wooden spoon to squish and extract as much juice as possible. Mix the raspberry puree and the sparkling water together with the lemon zest. This would also be gorgeous with Prosecco instead of water. If you think it needs more sugar, dissolve a few tablespoons in a little hot water, add to the sparkling water, then chill and serve.
A word of warning, though. When you add the sparkling water to the raspberry mixture, it foams up like Alka-Seltzer and may spill everywhere. So go easy - the first time I made this I had no fun cleaning up sticky raspberry spillages!!