Do you ever find yourself choosing the easy way out when it comes to preparing meals for the kids and yourself? I know a lot of us do! This is why Baby on the Hip has decided to host a Baby Food Making Workshop. Why not learn some great new recipes and fun easy ways to prepare nourishing, fresh, healthy foods. Lately, people have been drawn towards the cheap, highly processed foods that are convenient, and these choices can lead to long-term health effects. It’s never too late to get started and transform the way children eat and perceive food.
Check out these top 5 Reasons why making your own baby food is better (Courtesy of the Little Kitchen Blog)
No. 5 – Teaching your baby to like a variety of flavours
Exposing your baby to a variety of flavours will set the stage for a lifetime of healthy food choices. Try and use as many flavours, spices, and textures as you can in the first few months. Take advantage of this stage, because it starts to diminish the moment they start walking.
No. 4 – Better control on what your baby eats
There is no better way to know where your food comes from than when you make your own. Choose organic food whenever possible and try to to support your local farmers. If you have access to good, clean food for your baby, then why not use the better way!
No. 3 – Taste varieties that aren’t available on the shelf
If you have access to different foods that you can introduce to your baby then you should do it! Most likely those are not foods available in any pouch or jar. If you refer to reason #5, you’ll understand why it’s so critical to introduce them to so many flavours from the beginning.
No. 2 – Teach your kids what food should taste like
There’s something a little unnatural about the baby foods on the shelves. The flavours are bland, the colours are muted, and the texture is super smooth. The bright flavors are lost during the high-heat processing method or from sitting on the grocery shelf for extended periods of time. Set up your own baby food tasting experiment. Sauté up some carrots and compare them to three different jarred varieties. Which one tastes more like a real carrot? This is your chance to teach kids what real food should taste like.
No. 1 – Re-establish a connection to food
As a culture, we’ve lost our connection to food. Most people think food comes from the grocery store and have no concept of how it came to be there. Take this opportunity to involve baby in the whole process: have them watch you roast sweet potatoes, smear it all over their face so they can taste the flavor, give them a cooked chunk to squish in their hands, and do anything to involve them in the process of transforming raw ingredients into their food. Take this time to teach them that real food is something to appreciate.
Our Baby Food Making Workshop will be hosted by the wonderful people from Biking for Bellies. This fundraising program is geared towards helping support the start-up of a meal program at the new Thorncliffe Park Kindergarden only school currently be built. The kindergarten school is the first of its kind in Canada. Many of you may not know this, but the largest elementary school in North America is right here in the GTA in Thorncliffe Park. Just over 1, 300 students attend this school on a daily basis and unfortunately, most of these students come from low-income families. A great number of students attend school on a daily basis without having breakfast and sometimes even dinner. Can you imagine?! The school generously started a morning meal program that hands out 1, 300 snacks 5 days a week that contain food from three food groups. $1 a day per student adding up to $1, 300 a day, which is $300, 000 a year!
In the fall of 2013, the new kindergarten school will be opened in Thorncliffe Park welcoming 700 students and there is currently no meal program. All proceeds made at the Baby Food Making Workshop will be donated to Biking for Bellies in hopes of creating this crucial program. Join us on Tuesday, June 25 at our College store at 786 College Street at 6:30pm, to change the way we eat and have a new understanding to food.
Click here to view the Event Baby Food Making Workshop
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