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Foodies, travel enthusiasts and people who love to cook with growing children may want to bring up their children to appreciate a good eating adventure and like having fun in the kitchen.
Although I do not have children of my own, let me share with you some of the tips and tricks that my grandmother used to raise me and my sister to become avid foodies and cooking enthusiasts...
MAKE EATING FUN
- Make eating a fun activity. As quite a picky eater during my early childhood, I used to play and eat at the same time. That was one of the only ways I will eat whatever I was given because I found it a fun activity.
- Organise an eating competition. The person who eats the fastest wins. No rewards are necessary. The reward is the honour of winning.
DEVELOP FUN FOOD ITEMS
- Make food as appealing as possible to children - hide vegetables in food by blending them and by using them to decorate food.
- Children like stuff that are small in size. For example, they would like tiny cupcakes, cheese sticks, mini chocolates bites and colourful stuff (though too much artificial colouring is not good. Try and source out for natural colouring from your baking specialist stores or supermarkets). Try to make you food into bite sizes to attract your children to eat them.
- Always change the menu. Getting them to be adventurous by letting them try new food is vital to ensure they will be food enthusiasts in the future.
APPOINT MINI KITCHEN HELPERS
- Nothing beats a good time in the kitchen where children bond with the adults by learning cooking traits through a fun time in the kitchen making something they themselves like to eat like cupcakes and cookies. Many children first learn how to cook by baking.
- Appoint each person with a cooking task - like measuring the flour, sugar, etc or mixing the cake batter. Baking is a good way to cultivate the love for cooking among children because it turns ‘play dough’ into a real-time activity that actually produces real food. Why would they want to play ‘play dough’ if they could play with ‘real dough’ and eat something they have baked as a reward?
- Don't be angry if your child eats raw dough. If you punish them you will make them resent cooking. It is no harm to let them eat a bit of raw dough. Tried and tested .I have eaten tonnes of cookie/cake raw dough when I was a kid. Nothing happened to me. Not even a stomache.
- Let them play ‘cooking’ with toys. In Malaysia, this is known as ‘masak-masak’. Although they are only playing with miniature pots and pans, they may soon turn their ‘play time’ into a real interest in cooking.
DO NOT BE OBSESSED WITH FOOD HYGIENE
- Don't be too worried about food hygiene. I mean, you can take it into account but do not be too obsessed by it.
- As a child – I used to eat at roadside stalls around the villages, at shacks built with zink roof illegally and at food stalls with no proper hygiene. That was okay.
- This is because if you bring up a child with food that is not too hygiene, they will have a much stronger in immunity to the food they eat in the future. I have a good reputation for having an ‘iron stomach’. When everyone else gets stomache because they ate at a shop that is not so clean, my stomach feels perfectly fine! This is because I was brought up in an environment where I ate at places that are not necessarily hygiene. Because of my upbringing, I can eat anywhere..and that's the coolest part of it all.
I hope sharing my childhood experience will be helpful to you. There are no full proof methods to get your child into becoming foodies - but the methods I mentioned earlier worked for me and my sister. Happy trying!
