Simple strategies to get kids to eat right

Mac and cheese with cauliflower puree, chocolate brownies with hidden blueberries and pasta with tomato sauce featuring sweet potatoes and carrots may sound strange, but for a mother desperate to feed her children healthy foods, these strange meals were the solution.

Missy Chase Lapine, author of “The Sneaky Chef” book series, said it took years of experimenting to come up with the hundreds of recipes that fill her books.

Lapine, who calls herself a “Mom Chef,” said she is totally self-taught in the kitchen and was never trained in the culinary arts.

“I determined the comfort foods that the family loves and made them healthy,” Lapine said.

She has three colored purees: a purple puree made of spinach and blueberries, an orange puree made of sweet potatoes and carrots and a white puree made of cauliflower and squash. She uses these purees as an ingredient in familiar dishes to make those favorites healthier and “super-charged.”

Lapine began experimenting with these and other recipes when her youngest child developed food allergies and asthma.

“She was a picky eater, so I had to be clever to help her get well and get nutritious meals into her,” Lapine said.

She said the best way to begin a healthy diet for children is to start with foods they already like.

“If they love mac and cheese or hamburgers or spaghetti, look those up in my books and see how to make them healthier and build from there,” Lapine said. “It doesn’t change the taste at all.”

Healthy eating is very important for children, she said.

“It makes all the difference at 10 o’clock today and 10 years from now,” she said. “Kids will feel better, do better in school and 10 years from now, they won’t have any of the illnesses that plague us.”

Eating right is only one aspect of being healthy, she said.

“Food is only half the battle,” Lapine said. “You have to get the kids moving.”

In addition to her “Sneaky Chef” books, Lapine also penned “Sneaky Fitness.”

“There was a study done that said older children, like tweens and teens, spend eight hours a day sitting behind some kind of electric device,” she said. “We are a push-button society.”

However, she said, there’s no reason to make a huge leap to the gym.

“Put a mini trampoline in front of the television and don’t say anything about it,” she suggested. “All of a sudden, they are bouncing their way through ‘American Idol.’”
She said you can play similar tricks with healthy foods.

“Put out raw broccoli with dip and when they are hungry, they’ll try it,” Lapine said.

Lapine’s books, “The Sneaky Chef,” “The Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat on Your Man (in the Kitchen),” “The Sneaky Chef to the Rescue,” and her newest addition, “Sneaky Fitness,” can all be found at book stores everywhere including Barnes & Noble

source: nj