Candy, cakes and chocolates are very popular during the holiday time. The shops and homes are full of them and even the strictest parents relax their rules. I want my kids to eat healthy but I don’t want them to miss out on the joys of holidays and the sweet taste that comes with it. Licking a cauliflower floret is not the same as licking a lollypop and the Christmas tree would not be the same without gingerbread men or peppermint sticks hanging from it. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Food
Why should we pay attention to what we eat?
The answer is simple: because it impacts our health. The choices we make in shops and restaurants have a significant impact on our lives. We all know about the advice to drink fewer sodas, eat less fat and avoid trans fats. But not everyone knows that there are dangerous synthetic chemicals in what we would consider healthy foods like milk, yogurts, breads and even some fruit and veg.
Robyn O’Brien talks about Continue reading
My new favorite product – Artisana’s walnut butter
A few weeks ago, I found Artisana’s walnut butter in my local shop and knowing that walnuts are a good source of unsaturated fat, I couldn’t resist buying it. Having shunned nut butters in the past, I was surprised just how delicious it was. It tasted exactly like eating whole walnuts. The smooth yet grainy texture worked perfectly on my piece of wholegrain toast.
Made from just two ingredients: Continue reading
How do I get my child to eat more veggies?
This is a question everyone asks at at one point or another. Quick search on the web immediately pops up with lots of lists of proven ways to make this happen. These ‘proven’ ways include: setting an example, arranging the vegetables into a pretty shape, making food fun, getting kids involved in cooking the food, rewarding good behavior, enforcing the ‘one bite rule’, trying it at least 15 times, offering diverse colors and many others. In a desperate attempt to get my boys to eat a potato in any shape or form, including fries, I tried all of these and they all failed. For my boys potato was just not for eating, they had fun cooking it or throwing it on the floor but not eating it.
I started to dig a little further into why these ‘proven’ ways have failed and I discovered that Continue reading
Does meal planning lead to a healthier and happier life?
Yes it does and if you have never planned a meal before then check out cooksmarts.com. Cooksmarts is a cool new company that I came across very recently. It was set up by Jess Dang with the mission ‘to help you live happier, simpler, smarter in the kitchen by creating content that inspires, educates, and empowers the everyday home cook.’ They make meal planning easy and have lots fantastic recipes.
I am a big believer in meal planning. I used to love the spontaneity of cooking or going out while single but with 2 little boys constantly asking: “what’s for breakfast”, “what’s for lunch”, “what snack do we have today”, “what’s for dinner” I couldn’t live without my meal plan now. In our house having a meal plan means that we go to the shop less often, the trips to the shops are quicker, we buy only the things we need and we have very little kitchen waste. In addition, it saves money and gives me more time and energy to do the things I love like researching answers to nutrition related questions and teaching Zumba. My boys love knowing what will be for dinner and they look forward to it. Every week they also get to choose their favorite meal which I then incorporate into our plan. Everyone is happy.
However the biggest reason by far why I think meal planning is important is that Continue reading
Nutrition in the news – interesting articles from August 2013
Here are some interesting articles that I came across in August 2013: Continue reading
Soylent – is it the new food of the future?
Chances are you have never heard of Soylent. Soylent is the most recent development in the area of food substitutes. I love food – I love the way it looks and I love the way it tastes and I would quite happily spend time cooking it. While I remain to be convinced to substitute the food that I love for Soylent, I think it does have a certain appeal especially to those that are on a budget, are time constrained or eat to survive not to enjoy the experience.
So what is Soylent?
Habit Changer® Feeding Your Kids App for iPhone
There has been an explosion in various diet / nutrition apps that are available to download on iPhone or android. These apps have had such an impact that Weight Watchers company reported a 19% drop in profit citing “losing customers to free apps and other electronic slimming aids” as the main reason for the decline. Here I review one of these apps.
What is it all about?
Feeding your kids app is an iPhone app aimed at parents who are interested in teaching their children to eat healthy and varied diet and to set early heathy eating habits. It has been created in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative and is free to all parents.
It is a 42 day programme and each day presents a new challenge. These challenges range from Continue reading
Welcome to Tastes Nutritious – answers to everyday nutrition questions
First things first. I am not a nutritionist – I’m an economist, a strategy consultant and a mother of two. I have, however, recently become a nutrition fanatic. I attend nutrition courses at Stanford University and spend much of my time researching nutrition related topics online, reading the product labels and reviewing research papers in order to find out answers to ongoing nutrition questions.
Having learned and collected so much nutrition related information, Continue reading