"What shall we have for dinner?"

Come evening and you are faced with an eternal dilemma

"What shall I cook for dinner?" it goes.

In such a state, if we try to tell you about cooking healthy and nutritionally balanced meals, you may dismiss the thought as too cumbersome or too time-consuming. Fact is, this is not true. Cooking healthy meals does not necessarily mean imposing a series of "don'ts" on your family. It is up to us as caring parents to ensure that we do not impose extremes on our children's eating habits.

Of course, you cannot change your family's habits overnight. The family diet should be nutritionally sound, but should fit in with your present way of life, be enjoyable and easy for you, and your family to live with.

Prevent instead of curing illness

Our children become sick because of an explosion of empty, chemical and sugar laden food. Toxins introduced by modern environment are not a gradual tide, they are a deluge. We are seeing the results in our children. If we refuse to feed our children the foods that destroy health, we can build health instead of disease, prevent instead of struggle for cure.

Easy does it

There's only one way of adapting your family's diet to a healthier one.

Gradually.

By weaning children straight on to the healthy diet that is great fun. Your kids will enjoy it as much as you do. And before you know it, you have prepared the foundation which will ultimately set your child in good stead for a healthy life in the future. They will be free from modern day scourges of poor dietary habits and poor nutrition.

Many childhood ailments, allergies, chronic coughs and colds, poor growth, learning disorders are being linked to poor nutrition and the consumption of sugary foods, chemicals and additives.

(My own children as a matter of fact had asthma. I encouraged them to drink more fresh fruit juices rather than the chemical water of aerated soft drinks and artifically coloured foods. Predictably, it worked like magic and they did not fall ill so often).

Tips for changing the family diet

1. Use non-stick cooking utensils to reduce fat while cooking.
2. Use vegetable oils for cooking instead of ghee or butter.
3. Increase consumption of high fibre whole grain cereals such as wholemeal flours, brown rice and potatoes. Use a mixture of wholemeal and white flours for baking cakes for young children.
4. Make all the changes gradually.
5. Eat food which is as near to the natural state as possible, avoiding foods with artificial additives and colours.

Cooking for busy parents

For busy parents with a full timetable, whether at home or at work, it is very important to plan a week's menu to avoid resorting to junk food, impulse buying and the frying pan at the last minute. Fast foods like potato chips, pav bhaji, fried puris, ice-creams have many fresh ingredients but unhealthy foodstuffs are added to them during processing such as additional fat, starchy fillers, additives and colourings, salt and sugar.

Towards more healthy lunchboxes

It is not necessary for children to have large amounts of potato wafers, chocolates and sweets in the lunch box. Besides being high in sugar, additives and fat, they ruin the appetite. A controlled number of sweets is a better idea. Try to avoid sugary of fried snacks as they destroy appetite; but a fruit or salad to chew on is a good idea. Labour saving devices in the kitchen are now available, which should leave you more time to spend on the family but the time spent in cooking well for a growing family is time well spent.