This is a guest post by Isabella York.

photo credit: miheco

As a mother, proper nutrition for my children is first and foremost on my mind. To raise healthy children, I must pay attention to what I feed them. It is common knowledge that living right means eating well, and that a healthy lifestyle starts at a very early age. My kids are on the younger side (Girl Child is 6, Boy Child is 4), so it’s easier to instill the practices that lead to good health. Lately I’ve been transforming family meals, and I’m proud that I’ve got several nutritious dishes on hand that are easy to prepare and that my children enjoy. While researching, I came across several web articles on cooking methods. It seems that how you prepare food in general has a huge impact on its nutritional content.

Of course, our earliest ancestors had no qualms about nutrition, with food being mostly about survival. Most viands were eaten raw until the discovery of fire, which came much, much later. With the knowledge of planting and harvesting, vegetables and other grains were introduced. At this time various cultures, mostly the Egyptians and Chinese, were all about spices as a form of enhancing the taste of their food. Once the trade routes were firmly established, this practice quickly spread to other parts of the world. Very soon, new dishes were being introduced to the general public and this resulted in the publishing of the first cook books. Cuisine evolved with the demand for new gastronomic delights, and now there is a focus on the nutritional content of food – and how preparation methods affect that nutritional value.

Any type of food preparation entails a loss of nutrients to some degree. However, some aspects of the process of preparing food cannot be overlooked due to other health purposes. For example, some forms of raw food may be harmful to your health, such as raw eggs that cause Salmonella poisoning. The main objective of proper food preparation is to ensure that the food isn’t over processed. For optimal nutrition, cook only as much as necessary to maintain essential vitamins and minerals, and here’s how:

Meat

The main health deterrent in meat and poultry dishes is the grease that comes from the use of too much cooking oil. This practice not only detracts from the taste but piles on the pounds as well. It’s ideal to use techniques that don’t include oil or batter. Shorter cooking times are also desired in the event that large amounts of grease cannot be avoided. These methods include:

• Grilling:When using this method, avoid overcooking or burning the meat. Charred portions of meat present significant health hazards. This is an ideal technique for low fat delicacies.
• Broiling:Low fat meats are also recommended with this method. The high heat and quick preparation time ensure that very little nutrients are lost. At my house, we’re big fans of broiled chicken and vegetables. In the fall I slice some apples and broil them with the chicken; the house smells of an autumnal heaven.
• Pressure Cooking:Tough meats are made tender by this cooking technique. It also preserves nutrients by making short work of the preparation time.
• Stir-fry:Only small amounts of oil and fat are required when doing a stir-fry. It decreases the amount of grease while preserving vitamins and minerals with the quick cooking time. Stir fry is quick and nutritious when the kids are howling for food. They munch on carrot sticks and hummus while I prepare. I’m not the most creative cook in the kitchen, so the internet has been a wonderful source for a variety of recipes. This Thai stir fry recipe is one of my favorites; I make a double batch of sauce and preserve half of it for later in the week. It tastes so fresh and light, and the jasmine rice is so fragrant.

Fruits/Vegetables

This food group possesses vital nutrients, and improper cooking methods could detract from their precious store. Even before the actual cooking begins, fruits and vegetables must be properly washed, peeled, and cut.

Most nutrients are present in the skin and just below the skin of fresh produce. More often than not, it is advised that they be eaten raw after washing in cold water, since hot water tends to dehydrate them and results in a loss of moisture and possible nutrients. When peeling, keep the amount removed as thin as possible and avoid including the fleshy portions. Cutting fruits and vegetables should also be done with care to avoid bruising which results in loss of nutrients.

Steaming and stir frying are ideal to cook vegetables. These techniques do little to detract from valuable nutrients and, in the case of steaming, do more to lock them in and preserve them in the food. Boiling, on the other hand, should be avoided since the prolonged cooking time inevitably depletes vegetables and fruit of their nutrients. If you are preparing vegetable soup, this method is suitable since the nutrients lost from the vegetables remain in the broth.

Pasta/Grains

This is a category I generally stay away from, as I don’t like how I feel after I consume gluten, and I’m not a fan of gluten-free pastas and breads, and their alternatives. What I and my family like is rice. It is a nice alternative, especially because it comes in so many forms and can be healthy. For Mother’s Day two years ago the kids bought me a rice cooker (Smart Husband gave me pretty earrings), and it saves me a lot of time; it allows me to cook without having to think about cooking. I use simple, old-time preparation methods for the lentils – I buy Goya lentils and I soak them overnight. To get the kids to eat wild rice and lentils, I add a dash of sea salt to their servings. It’s a simple, nutritious solution.

Now that you know, always keep in mind that it’s not only what you eat but also how it’s prepared. Hopefully, these methods will help in preparing healthier meals for your children as well as yourself. Of course, don’t forget to add imagination to every dish so that they will be not only nutritious and appealing to the palate, but they’ll also be attractive to the eye as well. Your children will definitely enjoy meal times from now on.

Isabella York is a mother dedicated to a healthy and organic lifestyle, without giving up her life in the process. Along with raising her son, she works for Balsam Hill, a purveyor of Artificial Christmas Trees and Christmas Trees.

©2011 Littlestomaks.com

This is a guest article by pediatrician Dr Ayala.

photo credit: mia3mom

I believe that anyone can cook, and that everyone should know how to cook.  I believe that teaching our kids how to cook healthy food is an important life skill that will not only enable good choices; it can also influence their food preferences.

I started teaching my kids how to cook as soon as they showed the slightest interest. My first lesson involved making a good green salad, and included the basics of how to wash and dry lettuce, and the simple principles of mixing a good salad dressing. The second session’s product was a nice bowl of lightly salted edamame in their shell, which my kids still think of as “addictive food”.

I didn’t get into brownies and cupcakes until much later. I figured that creating a dish makes its creator treasure it, and why waste a lesson of love on brownies, which any kid’s bound to fancy anyway.

In his new book The Upside of Irrationality Dan Ariely, professor of behavioral economics, devotes a chapter to the well know phenomenon of falling in love with the things we make, and the irrational value we attribute to the objects we had a more intimate relationship with. Ariely titles the chapter “the IKEA effect”— the Swedish maker’s assemble-it-yourself shelf Ariely labored over for hours somehow has a special place in his heart, and Ariely investigates why it’s so.

Through a series of experiments, involving the creation of origami animals, Lego patterns, and real-life examples of successful and unsuccessful businesses, Ariely comes to several conclusions regarding the evident connection between labor and love:

• Putting effort to an object changes how we feel about it — we value the things we labor over
• The harder we work on something, the more we love it
• We’re so invested in the things we labored over, and value them so much, that we assume others share our (biased) overvaluation of our creation
• Although working hard on a task makes us love it more, not completing the task is a deal breaker. We have no attachment to tasks we failed at or failed to complete.

Interestingly, Ariely also shows that both people and animals would rather earn their keep and work for their food. Even mice seem not to value free meals, at least not on a regular basis.

Kids in the kitchen

The lessons above are valuable and applicable to many aspects of life: I think “the IKEA effect” chapter (the whole book in fact) is a good read for any employer or employee seekeng greater work productivity and satisfaction, and for any parent contemplating showing his kids photos to a stranger (no, he doesn’t think your kids are the cutest — he couldn’t care less).

But back to kids in the kitchen. Learning how to cook is a valuable life skill that will not only enable kids to eat healthier — no matter what you make at home it will usually be healthier than the bought version — but can also be a great tool in directing their preferences toward those foods you’d like them to eat more of, namely, fruits and veggies.

Ariely’s lesson also made me think of the importance of giving kids a task they can complete. I suppose that being responsible for just one small step in a complicated dish would result in much less creator’s pride than being able to claim the creation from start to finish as your work. So selecting recipes that are of just the right technical difficulty to be challenging, but not too hard for a kid to complete is the name of the game.

This week we made potato gnocchi from scratch. I wasn’t sure my kids would be able to create dumplings that hold up in the boiling water their first try — I had many less than stellar attempts at this dish before I sort of mastered it — but beginners luck, or maybe I can take some credit as the instructor, they made incredible light-as-a-cloud gnocchi.

Ariely wrote nothing about clean-up having anything to do with the creator’s adoration of his handwork. Wish he did — I tend to find myself all alone when clean-up comes, and honestly, I can’t tell my kids that clean-up will result in great satisfaction in the same way cooking and serving your creation does.

I’d love to hear about your adventures in the kitchen as a kid or with kids.

Dr. Ayala

Read more from Dr. Ayala at  Ayala’s Herbal Water blog.
Follow Dr. Ayala on  Twitter

©2010 Littlestomaks.com

I have been getting very interesting responses to my question What does Nutrition from the Ground Up mean to you?! Instead of compiling all of them in one single article – as I had originally planned – I will highlight a couple of them at a time and write a series of articles during this National Nutrition Month.

Here is one from registered dietitian Elisa Zied:

To me, Nutrition From the Ground Up means getting back to basics in terms of diet, nutrition, and health–choosing as many whole, fresh, and minimally processed foods as possible and making them the foundation for a healthy diet. We all live busy, harried lives and have too much on our plates (literally and figuratively!), but if we take a moment to step back, look at our diet and lifestyle patterns, and take small, simple steps to choose and eat more of the foods that are lacking in our diet–like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean sources of protein in particular– that alone can help us get more key nutrients our bodies need not to mention leave less room for high calorie, nutrient poor foods. Each and every one of us has the power to start eating more healthfully. If we take small steps to achieve that by tackling one meal at a time, one day at a time, we can rebuild a diet that’s more nutritious and still delicious. Eating a diet that’s heavy in real foods that are healthfully prepared can help us fill up on fewer calories, and feel more energized. It can also increase the quality of life, help ward off diet-related diseases and conditions, and put us in a better position both mentally and physically to tackle all the obstacles and challenges we face each and every day.

Here is another from registered dietitian Caryn Roll, who also advises taking small steps as you take control of what you eat:

To me, nutrition from the ground up means cooking your own food and staying away from processed junk. I think people should just stick to ingredients that even grandma can understand.  Now that is nutrition from the ground up!

Make small changes and build on those changes like drink more water and then maybe try dropping one meat meal in favor of a vegetarian meal. Experiment with unsaturated fat like olive oil, nuts and avocados.  Switch to whole wheat pasta.

These are excellent comments and very actionable advice. I also think that the message of going back to basics reflects the current mood where a lot of us are becoming more aware of the pitfalls of relying on nutrition out of a box!

What do you think? What does this notion of Nutrition from the Ground Up mean to you? What small changes have you made to your family’s diet recently?

Please share in your comments below. I would love to hear from you!

©2010 Littlestomaks.com

This is the National School Lunch Week. Improving the quality of school nutrition is one of the ways to address the problem of childhood obesity. It is encouraging to see that the USDA has established the HealthierUS School Challenge to recognize schools that promote good nutrition and physical activity. This week, Secretary Tom Vilsack is recognizing schools who have achieved the “Gold” status in this program. My question is: how come more schools are not participating in this program? The Secretary should address the barriers to his program’s adoption and measure performance in a transparent way. Only then he can hope to achieve the scale needed to truly address childhood obesity.

Here are the 5 nutrition related news that caught my eye this week. Enjoy and drop me a comment to share your thoughts.

Honey! I shrunk the food ingredient list

In a positive trend, Registered Dietitian Janet Helm (@JanetHelm) points out that packaged food producers are scrambling to simplify and shrink the list of ingredients on their products. Michael Pollan should feel happy – after all, he is the one who has been telling people not to buy foods that contain more than 5 ingredients or difficult to pronounce ingredients! Actually, I agree with him and welcome this trend. Even though all these ingredients including additives, colorants and preservatives are considered to be safe, it just doesn’t make sense to me when I pick up a product which has over 20 ingredients. Why process the food so much?

Some of the new products – Haagen-Dazs five ice cream for example – now claim to be made just like the way you would make at home with only a handful of ingredients. Hmmm…I wonder if they cost more than the regular products! That would be a brilliant marketing idea – make more money with less!

Rice eaters have healthier diets – really?

A new study based on national food consumption surveys finds that rice eaters in general tend to have healthier diets because they eat more grains, more vegetables and dietary fiber, less added fat, less saturated fat and less added sugar. Rice is cheap and provides a rich source of carbohydrates.

I was intrigued by this news, not because we eat a lot of rice in hour household, but because the correlation implied that people should switch to rice! But then upon a closer look at the story I found that this research was sponsored by the USA Rice Federation. There is nothing wrong in urging people to eat more rice, but then the study should also point to the risks of eating too much rice. White rice is a refined grain and even when enriched with added vitamins and minerals, it is nutritionally inferior to brown rice. It also has a high glycemic index which will make your blood sugar rise rapidly. On the other hand, brown rice comes with an expiration date, may be more expensive, takes longer to cook and you may not like its chewy texture.

Just because someone eats rice, does not mean their diet is healthy on its own.

Home remedies for the common cold not backed by science

No doubt, eating warm chicken soup when you are down with the cold and flu is very comforting. But is there any scientific evidence that home remedies like the chicken soup, drinking plenty of fluids, vitamin C, zinc, echinacea, honey and garlic can treat or prevent your sickness? In an extremely well-researched article, Dr Ayala (@DrAyala) concludes that there is no solid scientific evidence on food, nutrients and relief from the common cold. Her advice – you can try these home remedies for comfort, and they don’t hurt except that you need to be careful about supplements.

I do take vitamin C every day, but I am under no illusion that it is the magic bullet for preventing cold and flu. The best way to prevent cold and flu is to avoid contact with sick people and frequently wash your hands. Vitamin C is an immunity booster, not an immunity builder. Proper nutrition, healthy lifestyle, good hygiene are the building blocks for good health. Not an isolated supplement!

New York City bans bake sales in schools

Would banning bake sales from schools solve the childhood obesity problem? New York City regulators seem to think so! They seem to be on a roll because in their zeal to impose a wellness policy, they are going after everything they can find which can be labeled as nutritionally evil for the health of our children. This is nutritionism at its best without regard to the cultural norms.

You might be wondering why it bothers me so much! After all, I don’t live in New York City and my children are too young to go to school.

What I find troublesome is that regulators and policy makers feel that simply by making new rules and demonstrating their power, they can change unhealthy behaviors. It is only the stick, never the carrot! In this case, everybody is rightly upset that they will lose a very traditional way of raising funds for school activities. But are the regulators providing any alternative? A few exceptions to the new rules are provided, but they are practically useless in terms of fundraising.

They should try to focus on encouraging children to make the right choices about their eating habits in the long run. Not simply ban stuff without providing alternatives.

Parents magazine offers tips for turning your baby into a veggie lover

Dr Greene, the author of Feeding Baby Green, has a nice article in the November issue of the Parents magazine. He advises to build on your child’s curiosity about colorful things by introducing him to colorful fruits and veggies. Start early, keep trying,  and introduce variety right from the very beginning. A lot of parents are concerned about allergies, so they do not introduce new foods quickly. He disagrees with this approach and offers scientific data which suggests that babies learn to love new flavors best when they are introduced to new foods in rapid succession. He gives you a nice list of 21 plant families you should sample with your child before he reaches the age of 1.

It may work, or it may not work – and of course, all bets are off in the toddler years! That is when they get picky and nothing seems to work anymore. Here are a few articles we have published to help you with fruits and veggies:

Ask the Expert – Developing a Taste for Fruits and Veggies
Help! My Kids Don’t Eat Enough Fruits and Veggies
Ask the Expert – Getting Complete Nutrition on a Vegetarian Diet
Help Your Child with Autism Have Fun with Food

Enjoy and do let me know you think. I would love to have you share your best tips in comments below.

Photo source -tomhe on Flickr via everystockphoto
©2009 Littlestomaks.com

In this week’s Ask the Expert, Registered Dietitian Janet Helm offered tips on how to safely introduce your toddler to sushi. She emphasized the need to be careful about bacteria, mercury contamination and parasites. Here are a few additional tips for you to enjoy the experience of sushi with your toddlers -

1. When eating out, always select a reputable sushi restaurants in your area. Read their reviews and check their safety records. There should be a restaurant food safety inspection program in your state which may publish their inspection records online. As an example, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation provides the food inspetion records of hotels and restaurants on their website. There should also be a way for you to register a complaint if you have a bad experience eating at a restaurant.
2. Ask questions about how the raw fish and rice is handled at these restaurants. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that raw fish needs to be frozen at -4 °F for 7 days or -35 °F for 15 hours to make sure that it does not contain any parasites. Rice should be prepared with rice vinegar so its pH is below 4.5. Overall sanitation, handling and hygiene practices of these restaurants should be of high quality. They need to also make sure that there is no cross contamination between raw and cooked fish.
3. When buying prepared sushi from a supermarket, follow the same advice and ask questions about the fish, rice and how it is made. You may find labels such as “sushi grade” or “sashimi grade” fish, but make sure to ask how the fish was frozen since these are not standard labels.
4. The best option may be to make sushi at home! You could try making a sushi roll without any raw fish and use vegetables or fully cooked fish instead. You can even involve your kids in a sushi making project – I am sure they will have a lot of fun playing with the sticky koshihikari rice! There are many instructional videos on making sushi at home; here is a good one:
   
   We haven’t tried making sushi at home so far, but after watching this video, I am planning to give it a try!
5. Learn to recognize the symptoms of illness from fish parasites. It can range from mild discomfort, nausea, cramps or diarrhea. In some extreme cases, the parasites can enter the stomach or gut lining which can cause severe abdominal inflammation and pain. Seek immediate medical help in such situations.
6. Like any other new food, it is better to go slow and introduce sushi in small quantities. Try to make it fun and interesting. The taste of soy sauce, wasabi and Japanese ginger may be strange at first, but in the long run your child may learn to like it. Eating fish, raw or cooked, has many benefits and if done right, you can safely enjoy sushi with your kids over a lifetime.

Have you tried sushi with your toddlers? Share your experiences and tips in your comments below.

©2009 Littlestomaks.com