The festive season and associated holidays can be a wonderfully relaxing time for the whole family. However, festive celebrations and a lack of routine can also mean more opportunities to eat more food more often.
Resisting temptation
Fast foods, fatty, salty and pre-packaged foods can be tempting alternatives to shopping and cooking fresh during the holidays.
- Encourage your kids to maintain their school-eating schedule. This can help to stop grazing between meals. Try to stick to a nutritious breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as healthy morning and afternoon tea snacks.
- When packing the swimming gear or getting ready for the walk to the park, throw in some diced fresh fruit and veggies to help with the hunger pangs.
- Encourage your kids to drink more water, rather than carbonated or fruit drinks.
- Ask relatives and friends not to give your kids lollies or chocolates as gifts, and ration the sweet stuff over the holidays.
- Focus on more activity to help counteract any increased food intake.
- Keep kids occupied as much as possible. Boredom can play a big part in snacking, overeating and drinking. Encourage less time on the couch, in front of the TV or computer and more time playing or involved in other physical activity.
- Get enough sleep. Kids who keep to reasonable bed times are less likely to be late night snackers.
- Help make mealtimes fun. Let your kids plan and prepare a meal; have a coloured raw vegetable meal – as many colours as possible; make fresh fruit and vegetable shapes with biscuit cutters; prepare a selection of fruit that ends in the word ‘berries’; spell out your child’s name with a selection of dried fruits and nuts; prepare a plate of chopped and diced vegetables with a yoghurt dip.
Healthy ideas for healthy foods
School holidays are a great time to spend time teaching children how to shop for and prepare nutritious foods for themselves.
Dr Rosemary Stanton, dietician, food nutritionalist and regular contributor to KidsLife, offers some ideas for healthy foods you can teach children to prepare.
- Set a good example by adding fruit to breakfast cereal or to natural yoghurt (a better habit than pre-sweetened yoghurts which contain minimal quantities of fruit).
- Make a smoothie (low-fat milk, banana or other fruit, a spoonful of yoghurt and maybe a tiny spoon of honey).
- Blend healthy drinks in summer. Place peeled watermelon, rockmelon or any other fruit that is cheap into the blender with ice blocks and blend to a thick and healthy 'slushy'.
- Boil or poach an egg.
- Make a toasted sandwich or a french toasted sandwich where the sandwich is dipped in an egg beaten with about a quarter cup of milk and then cooked on a non-stick pan.
- Make a healthy salad. Children will use their imagination, but ingredients such as different types of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, celery, grated raw beetroot make a good base, and you can then add sliced barbecued meats, cold chicken, grilled haloumi, hard boiled egg.
- Make pancakes. A simple batter consists of one cup of fat-reduced milk, one cup of flour (wholemeal is the best choice) and two eggs. For best results, mix the batter at least an hour before (or leave in the refrigerator overnight). Most children enjoy cooking pancakes, and they are delicious served simply with lemon and a small drizzle of honey.
- Learn to use the barbecue. This may be a task for older children, but ensure a healthy balance by including chicken, fish or lean meat and vegetables. Try barbecued cobs of corn (strip back the outer husk, but leave it attached at the base, remove the silk and re-wrap the cob in the husk), vegetable skewers (tiny mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, cubes of red and green capsicum and zucchini), barbecued slices of sweet potato or zucchini halved lengthwise. Children may think of other vegetables to cook outdoors.
- Make interesting fruit desserts.
Safety and summer eating:
- Make sure kids are properly hydrated (especially younger children, toddlers and babies).
- Ensure safety when cooking using a BBQ. Check gas appliances before use.
- Remember hats and sunscreen if eating outdoors.
- Remind your kids to wash hands before eating.
- Keep foods refrigerated and avoid leaving cooked meats and chicken in summer temperatures.