Karen Bali - 5-a-day For Kids Made Easy. Quick and Easy Recipes and Tips to Feed Your Child More Fruit and Vegetables and...

Karen Bali and Sally Child

5-a-day

Karen Bali and Sally Child

This first edition is published in 2010 by Crimson Publishing

Crimson Publishing, Westminster House, Kew Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 2ND

First published in 2005 as The Art of Hiding Vegetables

Karen Bali and Sally Child 2010

Epub edition 2011ISBN: 978-1-85458-658-2

The authors have asserted their moral rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Part one
Healthier eating for busy families

Healthy eating: a short introduction

The food groups and what they do

The benefits of fruit and vegetables

Why do kids hate veg so much?

Making sense of 5-a-day

Portion sizes

Should you buy organic?

Seasonal produce and food miles

Supplements

A word about allergies

Sneaking fruit and veg into meals

What do I do with?

When fruit and veg should become normal

Breaking old habits

Set an example

Give praise

Talk about it

Understand; dont fight

Changing habits takes time

Giving them choice

Just for you

Make it fun

Once a year

Save time preparing meals

Plan ahead

Shopping wisely

Make the most of your freezer

School lunches

Changes and additions to convenience food

10 things you can do right now, without effort, to improve the health of your family

Part two
Putting it into practice

With thanks to my wonderful husband for his unfailing support and to my gorgeous, long-suffering children for coping with my erratic hours and kitchen experiments. Karen Bali

Thanks to all my young clients who inspire me and teach me so much. Sally Child

With many thanks to the parents who read through the book for us to make sure we hadnt missed a trick, especially Ginny Cunliffe and Holly Keeling.

Special thanks for additional recipes to the Vegetarian Society (www.vegsoc.org), Amanda Bevan (littlefoodie.blogspot.com), Think Vegetables (www.thinkvegetables.co.uk), Riverford Organic Farm in Devon (www.riverford.co.uk), Ruth Darrah, Sue Lester and Meriel Pymont.

Thanks also to Beth Bishop, Sally Rawlings and all the team at White Ladder.

Although this book contains science-based information from Sally Child, she would like to clarify that some information and suggestions in this book are a step in the right direction and should not be considered an optimum diet. It is a compromise between an ideal diet and the demands of real life in a busy household.

If your child has any health conditions or you are concerned in any way, you should seek advice from your doctor and consider seeing a childrens nutritional therapist for individual dietary assessment and advice.

All preparation and cooking times are approximate.

The number of portions given is provided as a rough estimate for each recipe. Obviously, some children eat more than others (like us adults), so this is based on medium-sized child portions (and medium adult portions when a family is mentioned).

A balanced diet with at least five portions of fruit or vegetables every day we all know the theory and it sounds so easy, but putting it into practice is another story

Many of us struggle to get just one or two portions into our fussy little darlings; this is, after all, the fast food generation. The closest some kids get to greens is the football field and they wouldnt know a cabbage if it passed them on a bicycle.

There can hardly be a parent in the western world who hasnt at least once (if not once a day) felt guilty about their childs diet. Working parents without time to cook are especially guilt prone. We may feel that every other parent in the world is carefully selecting organic veg, preparing home cooked meals and serving them to their healthy, fresh faced children, who clean their plates, say thank you and offer to clear the table. Maybe families like this do exist, but this book is for real parents of real children living on planet Earth in the 21st century hard working parents who struggle daily to get their children to eat anything remotely healthy, let alone the five whole portions children should eat a day.

We will make your life much easier.

This book is not about having super-healthy kids who eat tofu and sprouts every day; it is a realistic guide for busy parents of normal children a step in the right direction towards healthier eating. Neither is this book intended to scare, lecture or bully parents into guilt and unnecessary hard work most of us feel guilty enough and work hard all the time anyway.

Guilt isnt hard to understand when articles about the state of our childrens health appear in the press almost daily, usually with dramatic headlines such as:

One in five UK kids overweight

The return of rickets: Vitamin deficiency disease figures up

Additives cause behavioural problems in our young

Diabetes: Kids are getting it too

Packed lunches fail the nutrition test

Is low fibre a problem for your child?

One toddler in eight has anaemia

Parents may outlive unhealthy kids

Meet the children who NEVER eat vegetables

According to recent government figures, a whopping 96% of children in the UK dont get enough fruit and vegetables. Whilst articles and statistics like this do scare many parents (and of course make them feel guilty), what is often missing is practical advice on how to improve the situation. In this book we focus on how to get more fruit and veg into your childs diet without them batting an eyelid.

It isnt easy being a parent today with convenience food, kiddies menus, a multitude of sweets and snacks, takeaways and soft drinks wherever you go. Almost every child wants to have the same as their friends and to eat things that look and taste familiar.

However, just a few little changes to shopping and cooking will bring about significant changes to the health of your children in the long run. We are not talking about a radical overhaul of your family diet in the makeover/change your life mould, just a little easy tweaking that can be introduced as gradually as you like. The best news of all is that your children will hardly notice the subtle changes that will increase their intake of nutritious fruit and vegetables. If you manage to make just one or two small changes its a start, so give yourself a pat on the back and remember that we are with you every step of the way.

Eating a balanced diet is something we are all encouraged to do, and children are no exception they also need a balanced diet for health and well-being in the short and long term. Although its not easy in the 21st century to give children adequate nutrition, by doing so we can give them a good start in life and increase their chances of reaching old age in good health.