Easter is over, but are you still on a sugar high from the chocolate bunnies and eggs? These holiday sweet treats can be highly tempting as well as addicting.
Here are 5 tips you can use now to cut back or eliminate sugar:
Image via Wikipedia
Kids can enjoy coloring eggs this Easter using natural dyes that are readily available in the kitchen. The eggs can be colored either after they have been hard-cooked or while they are being cooked, or “boiled”, as some say. Some of the colors will surprise you!
For coloring eggs after they have been hard-cooked, prepare the following dyes like this:
Image via Wikipedia
With the nationwide attention on obesity in children, could having food preparation education in schools be a solution to this problem? Or at least a start?
First I want to clarify the reference to “home ec” in the title of this. My history goes back to teaching home economics in the middle and high school. The students often shortened it to “home ec”. Since then this field of study has had a name change to family and consumer sciences (FACS). This is still being taught in schools, often as an elective. There are some food labs with hands-on cooking activities but many have more of an academic focus on nutrition, keeping a food diary, and evaluating their own diets.
In an effort to bring children’s school lunches up a notch on the nutrition scale, a public school in Chicago is not allowing children to bring home-made lunches to school. Children will be forced to eat the school’s lunches. Will your school be next on the list of following suit?
One might ask, what is there to say that school lunches are necessarily better than home prepared? Watching Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution on TV, I wonder whether eating at school will do anything for our children’s health.
I’ve revised my website http://www.ImagesUnlimitedPub.com and have added a FREE
chapter from our latest children’s book, Cooking Around the Country with Kids – USA Recipes and Fun Activities by Amy Houts. I invite you to take a look at the revamped website, see what books we have to offer, and get your free chapter from Amy’s book. You and your kids can enjoy cooking right now with recipes from the book.
To your cooking enjoyment,
Lee Jackson, CFCS
Food writer and author
http://www.ImagesUnlimitedPub.com
The results of the study by the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel, made up of doctors, scientists and consumer representatives, meeting recently to study a possible connection between food dyes and hyperactivity in children, indicated through a vote of 8-6 that food packages don’t need warnings about food colorings but that further study is needed. Their recommendations will be further reviewed by the FDA, who will then decide what action, if any, to take.
As your kids burst through the door after school are their first words “I’m hungry – what’s there to eat“? You may have anticipated this and been ready with a prepared snack. Or they may have to find or fix something themselves. A bag of chips is the quick and easy way. A shelf in the refrigerator or cupboard filled with healthy snacks is another option. Which way does it work in your family?
Snacks represent a significant part of a child’s diet. These foods need to nourish them and not just fill them up.
