Children and Cooking

I posted a picture of my daughter cooking us dinner on my Instagram a I got quite a few comments. My oldest daughter is 9 years old and she loves cooking. All three of my children love helping me out in the kitchen. They love helping me meal plan, choose the ingredients, stir everything together, and best of all, they love to eat everything they make.

There are so many kids out there that are picky eaters. It’s one of the big questions I get. One of the simplest things that you can do to get your child to expand their diet from chicken fingers and french fries, is to teach them how to cook.

Here are my reasons for getting kids more involved in the kitchen:

1. It teaches them about healthy eating. They’re more apt to eat healthier foods if they have had a part in making the meal. This can depend on the age. When my children were younger, I had them setting the table and making a salad. As they’ve gotten older, they started measuring ingredients for me. As they became more confident with knives and cutting, they started chopping vegetables and putting everything together in the bowls and pots.

2. It creates good values around food. Some of my favourite memories growing up were around our big kitchen table. I grew up in a large family and dinnertime could last anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. We learned how to carry on conversations, enjoy our food, and create relationships around that big table.

3. They are more likely to carry these values on into adulthood. There are quite a few studies that show how important meal times are for families. They can help prevent depression, anxiety and eating disorders, especially for young girls but also for boys.

4. When they cook the meal, they will try lots of different foods. I have been able to get my kids to try so many different types of foods and flavours because they’ve put them together. Their current favourite soup is Masala Lentil Soup with lots of spices and flavours. I’m not sure they would have been interested in it if they hadn’t put it together themselves.

5. It prepares them for adulthood. I have so many clients and friends who don’t know how to cook. To me, this is so sad because it’s a life skill! Being able to feed yourself properly is such an essential part of living, but unfortunately most adults can’t do this and are limited to sticking a pizza in the oven. If you teach your kids how to cook when they’re younger, they’ll enjoy it and continue it on in to adulthood and eventually thank you for preparing them for the real world!

If you’re unsure of where to start, I would suggest going to your local book store and buying a recipe book that is appropriate for your child’s age. I bought my kids their first cookbooks when they were four and we still pull our favourite recipes from those books! Take them grocery shopping and get an idea of what they’d be interested in making. Even baking cookies together teaches them about the importance of measuring and temperature times. Resist the urge to do it all yourself because it’s easier. I promise it will get easier and less messy as you go along!

Are there any recipes that you and your family love to make? I’m always looking for new ones!

Did you learn to cook as a child? Let me know in the comments below.

Your Microbiome Part 1 - For Infants and Children

Did you know that you’re actually made up of more bacterial cells than you are human cells? I know that I’m a nerd and I find that completely fascinating. For every one human cell, you have ten more bacterial cells. There are over 100,000 billion microbes in the body. That’s crazy!

The microbiome can be described as the population that resides within the human body. There is over 3 pounds of bacteria in the human gut, and it controls our immune system, hormones, brain health, and gut health as well as a host of other functions that we haven’t discovered yet. The human microbiome is throughout the body and covers the mouth, respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract, the skin, and the urinary and genital areas.

When you are in utero, you’re actually sterile. It’s not until you pass through the vaginal canal, that your exposure to microflora begins. This lasts throughout your entire lifetime, but the first two years of your life are the formative years. This is when your colonies of bacteria is fully formed.

When a baby is born by C-section it does not have the chance to pick up the bacteria from the vaginal canal. Babies who are born via C-Section have an increased risk of gastrointestinal conditions, weight management difficulties, and a 2-fold higher chance of atopy. In Canada, about 27% of births are C-section and most of them are elective. So what do you do if your child or you were born via C-Section?

AlFaleh, et al Cochrane Database of Sytematic Reviews 2011

Pistiner et al, J Allergy Clin Immunol 2008

Kalliomaki et at 2008, Collado et al 2008

Whether the baby is vaginal or C-section, there are quite a few studies that show that when a baby takes a probiotic, it lowers the chances of upper respiratory tract issues, eczema, allergies, and asthma, and autoimmune disorders throughout their life.

Rinne et al FEMS Immunol Med Microbiol 2005

Maldonado et al J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr 2012

The reason that this works is that the good bacteria provides a protective “barrier” in the digestive tract so that unfriendly bacteria types can’t fill the gaps and begin to take over. If they do start to take over, it can cause issues within the immune system. If the digestive tract gets compromised, that’s when the issues start!

There are a few probiotics that I suggest for kids. HMF Baby B by Genestra is for breastfed babies. It has the correct compounds to compliment the probiotics that they’re already receiving from their mother’s milk. HMF Baby F by Genestra is for formula fed babies. It compliments the bacteria that they wouldn’t be getting from breast milk. For children that aren’t being breast fed or formula fed, I suggest either HMF Powder or HMF Child by Genestra. My kids love HMF Child and grab it out of the fridge to take with their breakfast every morning.

Some other ways that I strengthen their microbiome is by letting my kids play in the dirt. They get really, really dirty. There’s dirt on their faces and under their finger nails. Yes, I do make them wash up for meal times, and they do take regular showers, but for the most part, they get to be normal kids who play outside and make mud pies. I also don’t clean everything like a fanatic. I don’t love cleaning so this is partly me (haha!) but when you sterilize every surface, you’re not giving their immune systems a chance to regulate bacteria on its own. I clean my house with essential oils and never use bleaches or commercial cleaners (Look at my last blog past for some more recommendations!).

In my next post, I’ll be talking about how the microbiome works in adults and what you can do to improve your digestive health!