Healthy Recipes For Kids
How about healthy recipes for kids, ones they will enjoy? Kids cringe at the thought of “healthy food.” Let’s face it, so do most adults. But it is not as hard as you think to create healthy, raw food meals that everyone will love. If proper nutrition is started at an early age, children grow up enjoying healthy food.
When we eat healthy raw foods, several things happen. First of all, we have more energy. And because we’re eating foods in their natural state we’re receiving all the natural goodness nature intended in the form of vitamins, mineral, antioxidants, phytonutrients, enzymes and many yet to be discovered nutrients. Research shows that these natural components provide a strong foundation for good health and may help prevent serious disease as well. The fiber in these foods will help to keep your colon on a more regular schedule which is critical to good health no matter what your age is.
Great healthy recipes for kids contain a variety of raw foods. Raw foods are a great start to any diet plan, especially for kids because they need healthy materials for building healthy bodies. Things like bananas, grapes, apples, sweet red peppers, cucumbers, strawberries, carrots, corn, raspberries, blueberries, avocados, mangos, pomegranates, tomatoes, and just about anything that you would find in the produce section. Spinach and broccoli too… okay, kids might not like those two right away, but you can add them to a smoothie and they need not know.
If you want to create tasty healthy recipes for kids how about getting your kids involved in meal planning. Let them add the things that they like to a salad, the main course, or even dessert. Let’s say you give everyone some lettuce or other leafy green and let the kids build their own salad from the variety of other foods in bowls on the table. There are lots of organic raw foods that can be added to the salad. Apple pieces, mandarin sections, celery, walnuts, hemp seeds, fennel, tomatoes, shredded carrots, raisins, peas… the list is endless, just get creative. And as we know a large healthy salad can be a complete meal.
Children are growing and need fats from healthy sources to build better bodies. Omega 3 fatty acids are an excellent source of nutrition which are notably missing from the standard American diet. Foods like walnuts, hemp seeds, ground flax seed and chia seed are great sources of omega 3’s. One of these fats blended with orange juice and a few herbs or spices gives you a very healthy salad dressing.
There are lots of things that you can create with fresh fruit that will get your little one excited. A really great breakfast meal, or any meal for that matter is a large green smoothie. Add fruits and greens to the blender with a table spoon of flax or chia seed and let it rip. Kids will love helping with this as well. It’s tasty and very healthy, fruit for energy, greens for minerals, and seeds fulfilling the body’s needs for healthy fats.
When planning healthy recipes for kids think of these words: fresh, whole, ripe, organic, and raw as the golden words for creating healthy meals and kids. Oh, and add one more, variety. Consuming a wide variety of fruits and vegetables is important for maintaining good health. So let’s review, involve the kids in meal planning and preparation, be creative, and let nature take its course.
