Child Nutrition

As you may know, in addition of being a GI specialized in nutrition, I am also a mom. And as a mom, I am highly concerned by what my kids eat. To be sure they will eat healthy food almost every day is one of my priority. In that context, I’d like to share with you some info about what should be a healthy diet for our kids. To help me in that matter, I completed an online course from Stanford University about Child Nutrition and Cooking.

Initially, I was surprised by the title. Child Nutrition and Cooking. Why “cooking”? But after a few minutes of listening the course, everything was clear to me. And it’s not only that we should cook but our children should see us or watch us cooking. Or even better, cook with us. Let me explain you that.

As Dr. Maya Adam says in her course, food is more than nutrition. Food gathers us around the kitchen, around the table, and maybe even in the garden! If we share the dinner at the table with our kids that allows them to share their day with us, to exchange, to ask some questions. Food is about socialization. If our kids feel comfortable at the dinner table, if the dinner is an enjoyable moment of share, they will be more inclined to eat.

Unfortunately, about 70% of the American diet is made of processed food. What’s the problem with it? It’s what’s in it. High unhealthy amounts of sugar, salt and fat. It may taste good, but it is not “good”. It has been shown that it’s related to several diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, … And sometimes when you think it’s healthy because they said they reduced the amount of fat, it may not be. They may have added some sugar instead. So, unless you are an expert in reading the nutritional facts of each product, cooking healthy meals from scratch with fresh food is the best option. Of course, I know it’s hard to do it every day because of your busy schedule (or because advertising is giving us a bad time)! Let’s try to advertise our children by showing them that we like this healthy fresh food. If they see us liking and eating fresh food, if they see us cooking it, they will be more inclined to like it.

Cooking with your children is definitely not the easiest part of your day but it can make an even more difficult part of your day (aka the dinner) easier! Let’s plan that once a month, or once a week. Let them choose their menu. Let’s try to cook it from scratch. And maybe let them cut the vegetables. You will see that after some time they will see fresh food differently. These wonderful colorful vegetables could be welcome at your table.

So that was about “cooking”. Next article about nutrition, I promise!

Reference of the course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/childnutrition