Healthy
Food for Kids (and Dieters)
©
Katherine Poehlmann, PhD
If
your kids clamor for pizza, burgers, fries, or microwaved snacks after school,
it shows that their taste buds have been conditioned to demand sugar and fat.
The school cafeterias are slowly yielding to demands by parents concerned about
childhood obesity to serve healthy foods instead of the traditional hot dogs,
potato chips, and pizza.
Kids
love bite-sized “finger foods”. When they come home from school, try serving a
plate of 3 or 4 of the following with colorful toothpicks and watch it
disappear:
·
natural
(not processed!) cheese cubes
·
slices
of fresh apple, pear, tangerine, or orange
·
unsalted
walnut pieces
·
sunflower
seeds
·
chunks
of fresh coconut
·
cubes
of melon or pineapple (fresh or unsweetened canned)
·
grapes
·
banana
slices
·
fresh
berries or cherries in season
·
sliced
jicama
·
olives
·
dill
(not sweet!) pickle slices
·
cherry
tomatoes
·
slices
of hard-boiled eggs or deviled eggs
·
“baby”
carrots
·
thin
slices of ham/chicken/turkey
Air-popped
popcorn with a low fat butter spray and a little organic sea salt is nice for
an occasional treat. Kids may balk at celery, but provide a yogurt-based
dipping sauce and this attitude may change.
It
takes just a little more time to prepare your own finger food snacks (and is a
lot less expensive) than to purchase ready-made convenience food products that
contain unhealthy ingredients. Often a large batch of homemade snacks can be
prepared at one time and frozen in small quantities.
A
cup of plain yogurt drizzled with a tablespoon of honey is far better than
fruit-flavored yogurt. Check the label on these pre-sweetened products. You
will find they contain lots of sugar and are high in calories. Make smoothies
in your blender with plain yogurt as a base to which you add naturally sweet
berries. Serve instead of ice cream.
Always
check the label when buying fruit drinks. Buy those that indicate “100% juice”.
Anything less, and you are paying for sugared water.
Forego
the impulse to buy fried chicken, covered with MSG-seasoned breading and
grease. Instead, buy a hot rotisserie chicken at the deli section of the
market. Cut all the meat off the bones, separating the white meat from the dark
meat. Store in snack bags and freeze for later use as finger food, salad
topping, an addition to soup, or sandwich filling. Eat or refrigerate/freeze
the chicken within two hours to avoid bacteria contaminating it. Bacteria
become active between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, so make sure the chicken
is hot when you buy it.
******************30******************
Dr. Poehlmann is the author
of Rheumatoid Arthritis: The Infection Connection, available at
Amazon.com and major bookstores, or click here to order now.
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