Get them into the kitchen! We are convinced helping kids become more familiar with foods, getting them involved in meal preparation and teaching them food name and types helps develop a life-long skill and interest in healthy living.
Here’s how to get them involved:
Farmer’s Markets
This is a great place to start. If you plan to cook together, involve them throughout the whole process, right from the shopping list. A trip to an open market can be so much fun – choose the ingredients together, chat about the colours and names and maybe indulge in a homemade artisan treat!
Make it interesting from the very beginning
Kids love stories – there’s so much you can chat about when it comes to food. Start by explaining where certain ingredients come from and how they grow. You could even try and bring them to visit a farm to see vegetables still in the ground and the journey it takes from ground to plate.
Hygiene and cleaning
It’s very important to teach them about the importance of washing their hands, keeping the cooking area clean and all the other necessary hygiene measures (like handling raw eggs or meat). We found that if you take the time to explain food and cooking properly to children and make them part of the whole experience (not as an annoying extra the background), kids tend to quickly understand and welcome these tasks into the cooking process.
Kid’s best friend: dough
Baking is the best way to start playing with food – kids love getting their hands dirty and work dough to make cookies or cake. And this is true for pasta too – it’s easier than you think – just mix one egg per 100g of the flour of choice and get kneading. Then have fun creating any shape you like. Pop them in some boiling water for a few minutes. Fun, safe, easy, delicious!
Pasta can be a great ally
Kids can have a lot of fun adding their favourite ingredients. Let them make their own personal sauce – this can be an amazing way to get them to eat vegetables (if they put them in the recipe themselves, they’ll be more inclined to try them).
Sabine Hobbel, an athlete and health researcher and her husband Nico Olivieri, an Italian chef share a love of food, fitness and nutrition. They are our Guest Bloggers this week in the lead up to World Pasta Day. The pair, mum and dad to one-year-old Aidan, run natural food company Leaves – pasta made from chickpeas and buckwheat.
