Healthy Home Cooked Food

Imagine a world where children were fed tasty and nutritious, real food at school from the age of 4 to 18. A world where every child was educated about how amazing food is, where it comes from, how it affects the body and how it can save their lives". - Jamie Oliver

Inspirational words by a great chef. Jamie Oliver has been working on campaigns to replace junk food with tasty nutritious meals focusing on young children.

Most of us (me included) are way too busy in our daily working schedule that we are denying our very children of the ultimate platform in consuming healthy food.

This made me reflect on the times that I relied upon commercially made food catered for infants and preschoolers alike.

The days when we went through McDonald's drive-thru to get Reena's dinner.

Or the truckloads of times she was given sugary drinks whenever she asks for it.

Preschools are trying their best to serve healthy food to children at a young age. They are going through the Singapore health promotion board just to ensure that food served in preschools are healthy.

And here I am jeopardising what have been instilled into my children.

Our responsibility as parents is to get children to enjoy eating healthy and nutritious food just as much as they enjoy junkies.

How do we get that? Turn it into a habit.

Get our fingers cracking,  we need to prepare, we need to be the ones cooking, we need to be firm and let them know that this is dinner and that's it, no way around it.

Reena was eating her chicken macaroni soup when she spat out her carrots. I asked her why and she answered, "Reena don't want carrots."

I cut it into smaller pieces and said, "Now they are cute little carrots. They taste better. Let's try them."

Reena did but refused the last one.

Her daily routine is dinner while watching television followed by sugar free grape juice.

She avoids water at all cost.

For that particular day, she wanted her brother's cereal puffs after dinner. I told her she could have it after she drank water.

This turned into a huge battle. She cried and wailed around.

I stayed firm to my word. That was when she realised that she can't crack this psycho and gave in. She drank a few long sips. I applauded with exaggeration and gave her a few fruit cereal puffs. I told her in order to get more she has to do the same.

Like I mentioned in my earlier posts. Everyday is a learning affair for us parents. I have experience handling young children but I still fall back into the trap of "giving in".

I am gathering more good healthy recipes for children and I would love to cook them up for my children.

This calls for a total dedication.  "Busy" must not be in my vocabulary anymore.

What is worst, Reena seems to be addicted to the ipad. Which is something I do not condone.

A routine table needs to be put into practice asap.