Cooking with Kids: A Powerful Parent Coaching Strategy to Help Raise Healthier Eaters

Abstract

The state of nutrition among children in the United States and worldwide is discouraging. Clearly, a blatant disconnect exists between what’s recommended as the healthiest diet for our children and what our children actually eat. But simply telling kids and their families to eat more vegetables doesn’t work to close the gap between the recommendations and the reality. If we really want to help coach parents to raise healthier eaters, we need new strategies. One of the most effective of these new strategies is helping and parents learn to cook together. This film engages children in cooking with healthy foods by sharing tips to raise healthy eaters through a series of three clips: healthy school lunches kids will love, healthy greek yogurt recipes kids will love, and healthy cocoa recipes kids will love. By making healthy eating fun, kids don't even realize that they are learning a lot about nutrition and how to make delicious choices that are actually good for them!