One of those habits is to make sure that children start cooking at an early age - rather than getting their calories from fast-food or unhealthy snacks. So today I thought I'd share four easy, but fun ways that you can encourage your little ones to enjoy a healthy diet!
Play At Cooking
Very young children won’t be able to cook straight away, but that doesn't mean you can't get them involved. Using a wooden toy kitchen is a perfect way to introduce children to food and is the perfect entry-point into the world of cooking. Children can practice cookery using their imagination, and when they are old enough, move on to do the real thing.
Get Them To Think About Food Combinations
As adults we know that all the best recipes out there combine different flavours and textures. Sweet and sour, lime and coriander, chocolate and mint - these are all classics which have been learnt through experience. But children don’t have any of this knowledge and so need to learn it from scratch. One of the ways you can do this as a parent is to set up a tasting session with your children. Get them to combine different flavours, and tell you which ones they think work and which don’t. They’ll soon get the hang of it, and won't even realise they're learning while having fun!
Start With Foods They Like
You might hope that as soon as your child learns to cook, they’ll begin with healthy foods. But as any parent will tell you, pigs will fly before their child prepares a plate of vegetables or a salad of their own free will. That’s why it’s a good idea to begin their Masterchef adventure with foods that they actually like! Baking is an excellent starting point, and so is pizza making. Choose recipes where the making part is a lot of fun, and children can customise their meals according to their preferences.
Never Force Cooking
Children, like adults, have an inbuilt desire to do what they want to do. So forcing them into the kitchen and making them join in won't always be the best way to go about the situation. Instead to get children to use the kitchen, it’s far more useful to avoid negotiation entirely and simply hand them a mixing bowl and get them to start stirring. Or to ask them whether they like the icing pattern you’ve started on top of a cake and if they want to finish it.
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