While Americans are living longer than prior generations, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, and cancer rates are rising over the past 20 years. Planning meals carefully at home could be the key to children’s health not only during childhood but into adulthood.
Children Need Nutritional Building Blocks
Convenience is very important but is there a high price to be paid for serving a family convenient foods? Children’s bodies need sound nutrition to build manufacture muscle, tissues and bones. Many convenience foods contain chemicals, dyes, and have been genetically altered. In many cases there are no vitamins or minerals in what children eat and the “food” is useless. Foods that come off a shelf have only a fraction of the nutritional value of foods in the produce and meat departments.
Very little of a meal preparation should comprise of foods from the pantry of freezer since pantry food has preservatives and freezing food causes a loss of vitamins and minerals. Living, whole foods should comprise the bulk of a meal.
The Key to Health is Menu Planning
Planning in advance guarantees healthy eating. Poor planning ends up going through a drive-thru. After a long day of work, it is very unlikely that parents are going to begin planning a nutritious meal. The answer? A menu.
A menu should prepare for food to be served to a family for a week. If a menu is in place, shopping is made much easier and waste is eliminated. If not, a family will resort to the alarming statistics of the average family – fast food four times a week.
To keep food fresh and at the peak nutritional levels, shop 2-3 times a week. There are meal planning software planning options. Some are Mastercook, Cook’n Recipe Organizer and EzyEating. Some are available on Amazon.com and other software retailers.
Which Foods are Best?
There are no perfect recipes for a family. A good beginning is a recipe with high protein, low carbohydrate, plenty of vegetables as a side dish, and no additives. Organic is best. Grilled instead of fried. Unbreaded over breaded. Fresh over frozen or canned. Select from a variety of chicken, fish, beef, pork.
Also select a variety of colors for fruit and vegetables.
How to get started? Some websites give families a great start.
Vegetables can be prepared ahead of time. They can be washed, chopped and be ready for steaming at the end of work day. Healthy soups can be made ahead of time and placed in a Crock Pot in the morning and be waiting for dinner. A menu will be the beginning of a healthy meal.
Good planning is crucial for healthy living. Healthy children miss less school and are able to pay attention better when there.
Source: Dr. Claudia Anrig
Barbara Pytel - Email me Experience Although I was never particularly fond of going to school as an ELL student, I ironically became a teacher, ...
