DUBAI: The kitchen is where one begins to know what healthy food is, and so parents must encourage their children to help them in the activity of preparing nourishing meals.
Dubai resident Suzanne Husseini who has been active in promoting healthy living through the Middle Eastern diet or Arabic cuisine, during the course of an exchange of emails, gave this tip to The Gulf Today when asked for her suggestion on the prevention of lifestyle diseases, particularly diabetes.
“My message is to always welcome your children into the kitchen, and, the sooner, the better,” she said. The mother of three was not only sharing her own experiences but was also giving, what seemed logical advice.
The parents, having sufficient knowledge and experience in life, are primarily responsible for the kind of lifestyle and, particularly, habits the youngsters would consequently embrace.
She mentioned of Type 2 diabetes — the condition wherein the afflicted person is able to produce insulin but his body cells either reject it or are resistant to it, adding that the juvenile population was more hit by this condition.
“This is truly a crisis as children do not make the choices to eat in an unhealthy way. Parents are responsible for their diet,” Husseini said.
“They need to be offered wholesome healthy options from the minute they start to eat solid food,” she added.
“They need to acquire the taste for real food and not the fast foods that have invaded the UAE,” said the featured presenter at major festivals such as the Taste of Dubai and the Gourmand’s Paris Cook Book Fair.
Children must be exposed to what healthy or unprocessed foodstuffs as against unhealthy fast foods and similar variants in which the “contents are distorted to create a questionable edible substance that is no longer healthy,” she said.
“Products that are processed have had the best things taken out of them and replaced with unpronounceable ingredients and chemical additives,” Husseini explained.
“The first thing to be sacrificed is fibre to create an edible product that is easy, transportable and can be cooked quickly and most of all, increase shelf life,” she also wrote.
The restaurant manager cited yoghurt as an example.
Saying that food manufacturers “take out the fat soluble vitamins of this dairy product, Husseini added that “To replace the flavour and loss of texture, it is (substituted) with powdered milk, starches, stabilizers — essentially more carbohydrates. And then sugars and sugar substitutes (as well as) artificial flavours are added to make it more palatable.”
Going back to the children’s orientation to healthy foodstuffs, she believes having these youngsters around the food preparation table will have them instill in themselves what fresh ingredients mean, starting off with the nutritious vegetables and fruits.
“Children need to touch real food, smell it and ultimately eat it. They will acquire a taste for the way food is meant to taste,” Husseini said.
Averse to the fast foods which modern society has welcomed, she also wrote: “Processed fast foods distort the flavour with their added fats, salts and sugar. (Children) will be hypnotised by those artificial foods if they are not introduced to the real thing.”
Saying that children are trainable and from age three could be kitchen assistants in terms of squeezing lemons or tearing lettuce as well as in sprinkling herbs and helping with the dough, Husseini who is into cooking demonstrations such as what she had done with Novo Nordisk in December 2011, added: “Cooking with your children will teach them priceless lessons.”
“They will understand that good quality food is made at home and requires some effort,” she said.
In the process, it not only ingrains in children what real food is, but more importantly, brings about better family bonding.
Through first-hand experiences in the kitchen, children learn that they must eat healthily for the rest of their lives, she said.
“Ultimately, love blossoms in the kitchen and the children will fall in love with real food and relish the experience in its preparation. They will want to eat what they have prepared,” Hussein also said.
Her tip on how kids must be oriented to a healthy food lifestyle supported what Dubai Health Authority-Clinical Nutrition Department director Wafaa Helmi Ayesh lectured before the women employees of the Dubai Naturalisation and Residency in Al Jaffliya last November 2011.
Ayesh pointed out then that “healthy lunches” must be packed with ideas from the youngsters since they are most likely to eat what they choose to.
Meanwhile, Husseini believes that if a diabetic woman plans to get pregnant, “she must seek professional advice from a doctor and work with a qualified nutritionist to develop a diet that will keep her nourished and keep the blood sugars at a safe level.”
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