When your morning routine involves not only preparing yourself for the day but your family as well it can make the mornings hectic and rushed. Sometimes it might even be hard to get your kids to eat breakfast and the easy way out is to just hand them a piece of toast or a glass of juice and rush out the door. However breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day and making sure your children eat breakfast is not only vital for their health but it also affects their learning ability.

The Good: There are many options out there for breakfast that are nutritious and delicious! From healthy cereals to yogurt and fruit there are an endless number of options to present your children with in the morning. One of the many good things about children eating their breakfast is that they will be getting the nutrients they need to jumpstart their brain. The nutrients kids get from eating breakfast will give them the energy they need and it will improve their cognitive functioning. In other words it will help them to process thoughts better, it will help their listening skills and improve their memory.

The Bad: If breakfast is skipped children will need a longer time to wake up their brains and bodies, which means they will not be ready to learn by the time they get to school. This will then lead to a lower performance in school and less energy throughout the day.

The Breakfast: There are six main nutrients that are consumed during breakfast: Vitamin A, Calcium, Vitamin C, Riboflavin, Zinc and Iron. These nutrients are apart of the recommended intake that should be consumed during the day and those who eat breakfast will most likely have a higher percent of these in their bodies than those who do not eat breakfast.

So take the time to make sure your children eat breakfast. It will not only help their growing bodies get the nutrients they need but they will also be performing better in school. If your morning is slammed and making breakfast will not work for you then do it the night before or on Sunday make breakfast for the whole week, whatever works best for your schedule. If you are not sure where to start here is a quick healthy breakfast you can try!

Baked Banana and Strawberry Oatmeal

Ingredients

• 1 banana, mashed
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 egg, beaten
• ½ Tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 cup fat free milk
• ½ Tsp. baking soda
• ½ Tsp. of cinnamon
• 6 strawberries

1.  Combine all of the dry ingredients together, rolled oats, baking soda and cinnamon, in a bowl.

2.  Mash the banana in a separate bowl and then add the rest of the wet ingredients together.

3.  Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and slowly mix them together. Be careful not to over stir.

4.  Get a small, 8 inch, square baking dish, put some wax paper at the bottom so its easy clean up, and spread the mixture into the pan.

5.  Bake at 400 for about 20 minutes. Add the strawberry slices on the top once it is done baking.

*The best thing about this recipe is that you can use any fruit you like, it is very interchangeable and you can add nuts or different fruits on the top once it is done baking.  

The post The Good, The Bad and The Breakfast appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.

By Sandra Ann Harris – ECOlunchbox Founder

Lafayette, Calif. –  I was stunned recently while watching a re-run of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution showing kids who were utterly unable to identify raw veggies. If our children don’t know what it’s called, how likely will they eat it?

Taking your family to a farmer’s market is a fun way for the whole family to learn the names of seasonal veggies, fruits, and even your local farmers!

Can your kid recognize a turnip? Can you distinguish broccoli from broccolini?

At ECOlunchbox, we’ve come up with a list of five fun ideas to help families enjoy an outing to their local farmer’s market while learning the names of seasonal veggies, fruits, and even our local farmers. (Yes, farmers have names, too!)

We believe that kids will eat better and have more fun at lunchtime (and snack time and dinnertime and breakfast…) if they get up-close and personal with their food chain while visiting their local farmer’s market.

Rainbow Colors

Color it nutritious! At ECOlunchbox, we’ve found that kids love to be sent on color-finding missions at the farmer’s market. Assign one child orange and green, and another child yellow and red.

Kids remember colors. Encourage your children to appreciate the nutrient value of foods by teaching them that colors mean healthy foods, or, in kid-language, “grow foods.” The brightest colors are found in produce that is in season, fresh, and eaten raw or lightly steamed.

With your farmer’s market bounty, create a “rainbow lunch“—festively arrange a tray full of colorful foods cut into bite-sized servings. This can also be an excellent way of introducing new foods and getting variety into the family diet. 

Dollars & Cents

Parents can involve their younger children in shopping by asking, “Can you put three zucchinis in the bag?” Or encourage their children to put fruits on a scale and follow up with, “Can you help me figure out how much these plums weigh?”

For older children, the dollars and cents of independently handling the bills and coins at your friendly local farmer’s market is a great way to build practical math skills.

Healthy Choices

Parents can give their children a budget, say $5, and ask the children to buy fruits and vegetables of their choice for their lunchbox. At ECOlunchbox, we’ve found that kids eat much better at lunchtime if they have a say in what’s packed in their lunchbox.

Kids love having the power to make choices about what they eat. What better place than the farmer’s market to give them that chance?

The Seasons of Foods

Strawberries in January? Kids will wonder why favorites like strawberries aren’t available year round at the farmer’s market.

Their questions will provide a great chance to talk with the farmers at your market about how food is grown and why it’s important to eat locally grown food that’s grown in season rather than import food from thousands of miles away.

Biodegradable Packaging

A fun farmer’s market question for parents to ask is: “What kind of packaging does an apple come in?” “What about an orange? A melon? A zucchini?” Fruits and vegetables come with built-in, biodegradable packaging—their skin!

A good follow-up question is to ask a child to think about the packaging used in pre-packaged lunchbox foods, such as chip bags, cheese sticks, individually sized yogurts, and juice boxes. “What is the packaging made from?” (Answer: plastic.) “Is the packaging biodegradable?” (Answer: no.)

At ECOlunchbox, we believe it makes good sense to pick healthy foods for lunchtime—and use healthy packaging to pack these goodies to school or work. Plastic packaging often contains BPA (bisphenol-A) and other unhealthy chemicals. Scientists have linked toxins in plastics to health problems like cancer, diabetes, and early puberty.

We recently completed a litterless lunch waste study showing that families packing lunch with conventional throw-aways generate 4,320 pieces of trash annually and spend more than $400 on disposables like plastic baggies, utensils, pre-packaged snacks, juice boxes, and more.

Interested in learning more about greening your lifestyle and having eco fun with your family? Please join our ECOlunchbox Facebook community or visit us online at ECOlunchboxes.com.

The post Where’s the watercress? The wax beans? Waldo the farmer? appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.