Healthy Family, Happy Family (9 page)

5. Have a fruit platter within reaching distance at all times. Marketing cannot work if no one ever sees your products. Fruits are out of sight, out of mind when banished to the bottom drawer in the refrigerator. Keep them washed and ready to eat, either on the kitchen bench, dining table or the most visible shelf in the fridge. A hungry child will often reach for the most convenient food item. (See the Power Fruit Platter recipe)

6. Have a set meal routine. It can be useful to set specific meal times so your child knows when they can expect to eat. Routine can help them form healthy eating habits—it can prevent overeating and it discourages grazing, which can lead to fussy feeding patterns. Here is an example of a suitable meal timetable:

When you tell them ‘Breakfast is at 7a.m. and your next meal is not until snack time at 10a.m.’ it promotes self-discipline when it comes to eating. They learn they just can’t open the fridge door and help themselves whenever they please. All family members should follow the same, or similar, rules as it encourages compliance and feelings of family unity.

7. You can help enforce this routine by keeping a meal timetable on the refrigerator door. If you have the meal-time rules printed and displayed for your family to see they’ll be less likely to inappropriately request (throw a tantrum) for food. As your child matures, you will need to update this timetable as the meal times will inevitably change.

8. Set an ‘eat your greens’ challenge. It’s vital to eat green plant foods every day as they are the top foods for good health and wellbeing. They also happen to be the number one most despised food as voted by children. If your child is one of the majority, then you may want to set a family challenge such as to eat one serve of green foods every day. You can use the My Reward Chart as a guide and write ‘One super green food each day’ in one of the first columns.

9. Speak to your child’s school about introducing ‘Munch and Crunch’ time. A school in Sydney, Australia, has introduced this idea: at around 10a.m., when children can become hungry and lose concentration, the teachers allow their students to eat a small serve of fresh fruit and vegetables while in the classroom. The Munch and Crunch rules are: parents should not pack messy foods and everything must be pre-peeled and cut up so it’s ready to eat during the short break. Munch and Crunch time is a great way to get your child eating healthy foods, because they’re eating alongside their influential classmates.

10. Use visual merchandising. Store vegetables in attractive, clear containers; serve fruit in gorgeous bowls or plates adorned with your child’s favourite cartoon characters; use fun spoons that are reserved for when healthy foods are served. Children are visual people, so make healthy food look fun with the right accessories.

11.
Stick ’em up. Instead of putting a packet of chips in their lunch box as a treat, let stickers and non-food treats be their reward.

12. Put food on your toddler’s fork and make aeroplane sounds. Choo choo train noises are effective too. Yesterday my twenty-month-old would not eat his chicken casserole. He is a big eater but that day he was more interested in playing with his toy cars. So I sat with him and called the spoon Thomas the Tank Engine. We filled the spoon with ‘coal’ and then looked for the ‘tunnel’ to hide the coal from the robbers. The tunnel was my son’s mouth and he laughed and then happily gobbled up the food—the whole lot. Food sounds fun when it’s accompanied by choo chooing noises and other playful sounds.

13. Don’t worry so much. Anxiety never inspired anyone so don’t stand there and fret if your child won’t eat. When you are relaxed and happy your child is more likely to be relaxed and happy too. And occasionally they won’t eat and they might go to bed feeling a bit hungry. I know this is annoying as it can affect their sleep but this is only temporary so don’t panic and fill them up with rubbish just so they’ll sleep (this only teaches them to complain more and hold out until the treats are offered). Setting up healthy feeding habits encourages good sleep in future. In the meantime, don’t worry—your child will not starve themselves to death and their eating habits will improve with patience and persistence.

14. Make up fun names. Call chicken rissoles ‘nuggets’. Messy eggs are better than scrambled. Shrek Pasta tastes better than spinach anything. Really Yummy Chicken Casserole sounds more delicious to a five-year-old than Coq au Vin.

15. Make your child laugh. Tell a joke every time you serve vegetables so you link vegies with laughter and good feelings. This linking method is used by the most skilled comedians. Every time the audience laughs they say a catch phrase such as ‘It’s true’ or ‘I’ll tell you one thing...’ and they do this over and over again. Pretty soon all the comedian has to say is ‘I‘ll tell you one thing...’ and the audience will laugh even before hearing the punch line. Linking vegie eating to joke telling and laughter is a positive way to associate good feelings with eating nutritious foods. To give you inspiration, there are child-friendly jokes adorning the recipe section.

16.
Use storytelling. Porridge is a big hit in the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Goldilocks digs the stuff so much she eats it straight from the bears’ bowls, without asking. Why? Because porridge is yummy and it helps you grow strong.

17. When you shop for bread at the supermarket with your child, make it a game to search for the bread with magic grains—the grains that can help you concentrate in class and do really great maths. If their grades fail to improve, your disclaimer can be that you bought the wrong bread, and so the fun search can continue (so can the maths tuition).

18. Do a puppet show and use vegies as props. It’s all about positioning. Give carrots, celery and beans the right publicity and have them show up at all the fun events.

19. Do a
Twilight
-inspired fruit bowl. A perfect red apple on the cover of a perfectly popular teen book could be just what your child needs to eat more fruit. Casually mention your
Twilight
-inspired fruit bowl. Fruit is tempting when it’s associated with the latest fads.

20. Buy a funky fruit peeler. Apples will never be boring again once you own a fancy apple corer and peeler. There are ones that make the apple unravel like a perfectly cut ‘slinky’ coil. Ask at your local kitchen speciality store.

21. Make fresh vegie juices. Make a juice out of carrots, celery and parsley and add sweet fruits like apple and pear. Add mint, ginger and lemon and give the concoction a fun name such as Vegie Zinger Juice.

22. Make Healthy Chicken Burgers and show your child how a really great burger should taste.

23. Make chicken and vegetable soup and add fun pasta shapes (see Easy Chicken Noodle Soup).

24. Use cookie cutters. Make your wholegrain sandwiches look fun by cutting out shapes with cookie cutters. Star shaped grainy sandwiches apparently taste better than square ones. You can either leave the cut out bread shape in the sandwich (so there is more sandwich to eat) or remove it and discard the small amount of leftover bread.

25.
If serving grainy bread to a reluctant child, why not try cutting off the crusts. They often taste dry and can make a healthy sandwich less appealing. Don’t worry, they’re not missing out on any nutrients. After your child becomes familiar with eating wholegrains, try leaving the crusts on. Last month my daughter asked me to leave the crusts on. Her friends eat the whole sandwich so now she wants to. I praised her for being so grown up.

26. Consider the weather. Vegie-rich soups are great during cold spells and salads are ideal for the warmer months.

27. Encourage your child to talk to their tummy. Tell them: ‘Listen to that full feeling in your tummy and stop eating when you feel satisfied.’ This encourages healthy eating patterns and may reduce their risk of overeating during adulthood. Toddlers and young children enjoy actually talking to their tummies: ‘Belly are you full yet?’

28. Swap acidic salad dressings such as balsamic vinegar and the usual store bought salad dressings which are full of sugar, for healthy, alkalising dressings made with equal parts apple cider vinegar, olive oil and honey. They’re great for the skin and they make salad more enjoyable for children. (See Tasty Salad Dressing recipe and Quick Salad Dressing.)

30. Try different cooking methods. Do you boil the vegies to oblivion or nuke them in the microwave and then wonder why your family turn up their noses at vegetables? It might be time to experiment with new cooking methods.

Firstly, observe your child’s taste preferences. Some children like mushy, well-cooked vegetables while others prefer raw vegies cut into dipping sticks, served with a dip such as hummus. Steaming vegetables is a popular method as they are moist but still crisp. Ideally you should steam vegies just long enough to partially soften them; this way, they retain much of their nutrients. If foods such as green beans and broccoli become dull green you know you’ve overcooked them (keep in mind, you child might like them well done).

31. Become a food stylist. You don’t need to style your child’s meal into a visual masterpiece. Something simple like making a face on their grainy toast with sliced banana or cutting the cucumber into fun shapes and whittling celery sticks into shaped ‘spoons’ can make even the most surly toddler smile.

32. Bake healthy muffins and
don’t
give them to your child. Have you noticed? Kids always seem to want what they can’t have. Make a batch of healthy muffins and store them in a clear container or netted basket, placed on the table. Then have one with a cuppa and make some ‘mmm’ noises. Do not offer any to your child. If your child asks for one, say, ‘These are very special muffins for the adults. If you’re lucky, I’ll save one for your lunch box tomorrow.’ If they whine and insist, get them to do a really easy task (such as putting away a toy) and then they can have one of the very special muffins. (Try Strawberry and Honey Muffins or Pear Muffins.)

33. You can also use such reverse psychology if you notice your child is growing stronger (if they’re getting rough with siblings or harder to wrestle with) to reinforce healthy eating. For example, say ‘Hey, you’re getting too strong, I’ll have to eat more vegies than you tonight!’ If your child beats you at a board game you could say: ‘Have you been eating brainy grains? I’ll have to ask Mum to serve more to me than you tonight!’

34. Show your child how to chew their food properly. Healthy food can taste bland when it’s first put in your mouth. It needs to be chewed several times before the subtle flavours begin to emerge. Let your child know this—‘With healthy food, the more you chew, the yummier it gets.’ If your child is a toddler show them exaggerated chewing motions and tell them to chew.

35.
Smile more often. A smile implies ‘I like you; you make me happy,’ and it is one of the principles for success taught by Dale Carnegie, author of
How to Win Friends and Influence People.
A smile can help to persuade your child to eat the meal you’ve just served and it can diffuse a tense situation if your child does not want to eat their dinner. If your child complains about their meal, smile and say something like ‘I’ve popped vegies on your plate because I love you and they help you play and have fun.’ Say it with a smile and it won’t seem like an unpleasant order, ripe for rejection.

37. Copy cat lunch boxes. Before you drastically change your child’s lunch box contents and start filling it with carrots and hummus, speak to the parents of your child’s closest school friends. Ask these parents if they would be interested in packing similar foods in their child’s lunch box to make compliance greater for everyone. My daughter used to complain about her lunch box items; she’d say, ‘Mum, don’t pack me the tuna pack, none of my friends at school eat them. But you can pack me a carrot because Ingrid has them in her lunch box too.’ I spoke to my child about being an individual and a leader instead of needing to be the same. She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Mum, I just want to fit in.’

Help your child fit in by talking to the other parents to see if they can make simple lunch box changes. These may include popping in peeled carrot sticks or having ‘Tuna Tuesday’ and only packing grainy bread sandwiches. Ask the other parents for their suggestions and be sensitive to the fact that some parents may be time poor. Gradually make your child’s lunch box a healthy one and chat with other parents about copy cat lunch boxes.

38. Marinate it. If your child is reluctant to eat chicken, lamb, fish or tofu, soak it in a tasty marinade before cooking it, between fifteen to 60 minutes for fish and in between 30 minutes and two hours for meats (overnight for special occasions). (Try Marinated Chicken Legs with Crispy Roast Potatoes).

39. Sing it, don’t say it. Each day my toddler opens our second pantry and empties the items onto the kitchen floor. This keeps him amused while I whip up dinner or a batch of muffins so I keep the lock off the cupboard door while I am nearby. He rolls the tins of diced tomatoes and corn across the tiles, the coconut milk ends up in the hallway and I find the canned tuna underneath the oven. My kitchen ends up looking like an earthquake aftermath every single day. I admit, it gets a little tiring cleaning it up time after time. The solution? We now have the Pack-away Song: ‘We like to pack away our things, so the place is nice and clean, we pack away (we pack away), for another day (for another day)...’ And he helps me place the packaged items onto the shelves.