Health: Make healthy eating part of the schedule

Without a doubt, Americans are obsessed with healthy eating.

If you walk into the cooking section of a bookstore, there are scores of books with glossy pages, advertising everything from 30-minute meals to gourmet fare. We want to cook light, low fat, low calorie, low salt. More vegetables, fewer meats.

At the same time, the dietary guidelines are changing at the speed of sound. Salt is bad. Salt is okay. Fats are bad. Eggs are out. Eggs are in. Drink more caffeine. Drink less caffeine. Every month seems to bring a new recommendation.

To top it all off, we’re busy. You might remember family dinners from your childhood, but few families manage that these days. Parents are running from work, to home and off to a variety of kids activities. Even as we acknowledge that the “value meal” from that fast-food restaurant isn’t the best for us, we wonder how in the world we could eat better in a fast-paced lifestyle.

Fortunately, eating healthy doesn’t require hours in the kitchen. Use these tips to make a family meal a little less fantastic and a lot more achievable.

1. Advance preparation. No one said dinner has to be prepared every day. Well, it has to be finished and served, but a lot of the work can happen ahead of time. Take a couple hours a week, maybe on Sunday evening, to prepare meals in “bulk.” This could be lasagna or sauce. Or prepare the individual ingredients ahead of time. Then on the night you want to eat it, you are assembling pre-made ingredients, not starting from scratch. This can take a lot of the stress of dinner prep out of the picture.

2. Only kids need babysitting. Choose foods that don’t require a watchful eye—after all, you’re busy overseeing the homework. Slow-cookers or crock pots are great for this. The Internet abounds with recipes for slow cookers, everything from soups to roasts. Assemble healthy ingredients, set the temperature, and walk away. Food that can roast in the oven or slow-cook in a pot (like a soup or stew) are other options for good meals that don’t require an ever-present watchful eye.

3. Make your kid the sous-chef. Kids love to cook. Maybe it’s the permission to touch food with their hands, or make a mess. But most kids enjoy being in the kitchen. Harness that enjoyment by putting them to work helping you make meals. Older kids may be responsible enough to use knives, and even younger kids can help pour and measure. Bonus: they get extra math practice learning measurements and calculations (shh, don’t tell them). Plus, kids are more likely to eat something they had a hand in preparing.

4. Color your plate. No, not with crayons or paint, but with food. A colorful dinner looks more appetizing and is more likely to be eaten. “Taste the rainbow” isn’t just for Skittles. When you plan a meal, assemble foods in all colors – yellow, red, orange, green, the works. All those vibrant colors have a lot of nutrients in them. Just stay away from artificial colorings to make your rainbow.

5. Make food accessible. Eating a whole carrot or apple might not be appealing. But instead of stocking your cabinets with junk food, stock your fridge with bags of cut vegetables and cheese, or single-serving cups of yogurt (real yogurt, not the fake color/sugared kind). Keep packs of whole grain crackers at a level that is easy for kids to reach. By keeping health food at hand’s reach, and making it in kid-sized portions, you’ll increase the chance your child will choose healthy over junk.

6. Enlist another parent. Looking for ways to spice up your routine? Find another parent to swap a meal with. This is a great way to introduce your family to foods you may not think to make yourself, such as foods from another culture. Plus, you make friends and help another family in their quest to eat healthy.

Cooking doesn’t have to be a chore and with some thought, you can make healthy eating part of your life. And when you do, having the occasional cookie or junk food will be a real treat.

Oakmont Martial Arts licensed by the American Taekwondo Association, the premier North American organization dedicated to the martial arts discipline of taekwondo. They offer training for young children (Tiny Tigers, 3-5), youth (6-13), teens and adults, as well as adult fitness classes. Visit www.OakmontMartialArts.com or their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ataOakmont) for more information, or call 412-826-8004 to schedule an introductory lesson.

A software technical writer by day, Mary Sutton is the mother of two teens and has been making her living with words for over ten years. She is the author of the Hero’s Sword middle-grade fantasy series, writing as M.E. Sutton, and The Laurel Highlands Mysteries police-procedural series, writing as Liz Milliron. Visit her online at www.marysuttonauthor.com.