Connecting Families Around Healthy Food
Every time someone asks me, “So what do you do?” within minutes they’re telling me the last thing their kids helped with (or made themselves) in the kitchen.
With so much pride in his smile, Pete, a speaker at a conference I attended, had to pull out his phone and show me the pic his wife had sent him that day — all 3 kids at the table presenting a recipe they begged to make from a major cooking show.
At mom’s night out with my church, I hear about Brooke’s 2 boys baking bread with her, 5th grade Owen learning to grill with dad so well that he took over once a week, and Heather’s family bonding over homemade hot chocolate when her chef friend from high school visits.
Parents can’t stop talking about their memories in the kitchen and what they see their kids doing. I’ve never heard my computer programmer husband (or anyone else for that matter) greeted with such heartfelt stories as soon as a new acquaintance finds out what they do.
Food is the venue for connection, for memories, and it’s a powerful arena to build strong families.
How we Build Connection at Kids Cook Real Food
BELONGING
From little ones to pre-teens, parents find that these positive experiences in the kitchen help kids feel like they are more of an important part of the family, and parents feel that connectedness strongly as well.
RESILIENCY
Studies show that kids are more resilient to peer pressure and depression/anxiety if they have just ONE strong bond with an adult in their lives. We believe working together to feed the family in the kitchen is the best place to form these strong bonds.
AWARENESS
Kids gain a connection to their food, an understanding of how much time quality food preparation takes, an investment in their work that makes them more likely to try new things, and a conscientiousness about their environment.
STRONG BONDS
Strong bonds give children the safe-zone from which to explore their world without fear, know that they are loved enough to love themselves, and feel that they are a valuable part of their family and their world.
How will kids start to understand why eating healthy food is so important? It starts with talking to them about the foods we cook and eat together.
What If No One Teaches Our Kids to Cook?
Like a lot of moms these days, you may have had to teach yourself to cook. It’s a tough culture to live in, with Sara Lee and Mrs. Stouffer offering to do all the hard work for us at the expense of fresh foods, health, and the demise of family dinners.
On what will our kids’ memories of food be grounded?
Cooking is becoming a lost art, replaced by fast food, frozen dinners and boxed mixes – with disastrous consequences.
It’s time to raise adults who can cook.
This young generation will be the first NOT to outlive their parents’ generation, and the “diseases of civilization” are out of control: obesity, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension and autoimmune diseases get diagnosed in younger age groups than ever before.
We are a sick nation, and it’s time to make a change.
Our own family has seen a near-miracle happen because of diet and lifestyle changes, and we’re not the only ones…