Eating healthy can be considered as a hard task to fulfill because junk foods are much cheaper and old habits die-hard. But what if you start from when you were just a kid? That will be easier right? You could make up for your kids then! Try to incorporate healthy meals into your kids’ meal and make it as a habit. Kids usually see healthy meals like so much green! Oh the horror! But you can change that. Healthy doesn’t always mean green. They could also mean grill instead of fry; juice instead of sodas. So instead of forcing your kids a broccoli on a fork, try to oven baked a Zucchini like fries! And don’t worry about the ingredients, they are in Malaysia and it’s not hard to find!
Turn that frown upside down if your kids couldn’t even look at healthy food. It’s time to change into a new way. We’ll help you to make the perfect healthy meal with the ingredients that you can find near your local store in Malaysia. It might be hard to make your kids practice to eat healthily but if you know how to serve the meal in a more attractive way to attract your kids to eat, then we are sure they will love healthy food in no time!
These are the meals you can prepare for your kids and the good news is that, the ingredients are easy to find! You can substitute the ingredients too, if you prefer to do it your way. Your kids will definitely ask for more healthy food in the future! Just play around with the ingredients, there are no right or wrong in making your kids love eating healthy meals!
Crunchy Cucumber Fries
Highlighted
We know kids don’t like green meals, but make them try these crunchy cucumber fries! This is the simplest healthy meal that even busy moms could have done in like less than half an hour! Slice them into fries-like shape, big or small it’s all up to you. Prepare a mixer bowl with a pinch of salt, granulated garlic, and breadcrumbs (which you can find in any stores) and flour and another separate bowl of beaten egg. Take the slices of cucumber and roll them in the egg first, then in the breadcrumb mixture. You can either fry them or baked them, whichever you think the best then wal-lah! All done!
Sugar-free Soda
Do your kids love sodas and you just don’t know how to stop them because of how much sugar the sodas have? Especially Coca-Cola? We totally understand! Don’t worry, we got your back, parents! Try this recipe. It’s simple and even you can try drinking this instead of those mostly sugary sodas out there. Buy a bottle of carbonated water and fruits of your choice. Strawberry? Grape? Mango? Choose one and make a fruit puree with your food processor. Then add how much puree you want and mix it with the carbonated water. Serve them in a cute mason jar for each of the family members to enjoy in this hot weather.
Banana Oat Cookies and Cream Milkshake
Oats? Ugh, even some adult doesn’t like the taste of it. But when you make it as a milkshake, oh heaven on Earth! Make your kids love this extra delicious and healthy drink to fill their stomach. Add cookies and cream ice cream in your food processor with ice and milk and grind them the way you like it. In the middle of grinding them, add a cup of oats and grind them together. When you’re done, pour them into cute mason jars. Slice the bananas you have on the counter and arrange them on top of the milkshake then there you go, the perfect healthy milkshake for the whole family to enjoy.
Frozen Fruits as Snacks
Add this to the simplest snacks to make rather than to buy those unhealthy chips with too much salt and too much ingredients that we don’t know about. If you have bananas, or grapes or even strawberries in your fridge and you don’t know what to do with them, maybe you should make them as a family snack. Cut them into cubes and put them in sealed bags, put them in the freezers. Trust us, they taste the best when they are frozen. Some other fruits ideas you can freeze are, mangoes, pineapple, apples and papaya!
Yoghurt
If your kids love yoghurts then lucky you! But if they don’t, you can make them love yoghurt just by following these easy tricks! You know kids. They love attractive and cute things just like us adult does. So make these healthy foods attractive and that will intrigue them to try. If you already different shapes of molds in your kitchen, then great! But if you don’t, you can either buy it or get creative! Fill in the molds with the yoghurt of your likings like strawberry or raspberry flavoured yoghurt and freeze them overnight. The next morning, you can serve them with sliced bananas and put them onto colourful plates for your kids or you can make waffles and arrange the frozen yoghurts onto the waffles. Even we would dive in!
Healthy Pizza
Who doesn’t love pizza right? Psst—we do too! Take that leftover spaghetti or lasagna sauce in the freezer and let’s get right on to it! You can use bread for this recipe, but we love some pita! We put pitas across the baking pan 6 or 8 pitas and spread the sauce on top of each. Then we go crazy with the toppings! Remember, they must be healthy! Have some bell pepper (green or yellow or even red), mushrooms, and corns, chopped cucumbers, cheddar cheese and ground beef (lean meat) and drizzled them with olive oil. And put them into the oven for how long you prefer, then serve them onto plates together or separately for each member.
“Action screams louder than words” is the phrase that could be applied in this context. If you are trying to make your kids to eat healthily but you don’t, then they will use that against you. So instead of having a bag of chips in your hand, have an apple for your snacks. Instead of a can of Pepsi, try drinking a glass of fresh orange juice. Try to change with your children instead of forcing them to change.
Malaysians usually have the mindset that having a healthy meal is expensive and the ingredients are hard to find. But the fact is, if they know how and where to find the ingredients, it’s easy, and not to mention, affordable!