UNESCO enrolled the Mediterranean Diet on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. We are facing a valuable cultural heritage, a nutritional pattern, a balanced lifestyle that includes recipes, cooking, celebrations, customs, typical products and various related human activities.
The Mediterranean diet is ideal for children and for the whole family, it is based on a rich and healthy nutritional guideline with plenty of fruits and vegetables that are very close to us but that we do not always follow ... And how to make children interested in the Mediterranean diet?
Of course, education in the family environment is paramount, with the example we give our children we are doing a valuable job for them to learn to eat healthy and in the future continue to do so. We have to create the habit, using olive oil to accompany salads, stews, snacks ... Eating many plant foods, especially fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables ... It is recommended to make the fruit the usual dessert, while sweets, treats, industrial processed foods ... are the exception.
Also in the family menu you can not miss bread, rice, pasta, cereals and dairy products every day. As for meat, it should preferably be part of vegetable and cereal dishes. It is recommended to eat fish at least twice a week and eggs between three and four a week. At this point, we must remember that there are restrictions regarding the consumption of certain bluefish by children and pregnant women.
Finally, we remember that water is the most refreshing and healthiest drink, the one that should predominate throughout the day, and that it is very important (as well as eating well) to flee from sedentary lifestyle and exercise every day.
Also important are issues such as trying to make meals a pleasant moment in which we interact with our children (a very important interaction), without distractions such as television, a space and time in which children in addition to eating healthy are at Taste, you can talk ...
And what about the pre-meal steps? They also matter, and from letting children plan the purchase or accompanying us to make it until they help us when it comes to cooking, they will make them closer to knowing what a healthy diet is like.
Mediterranean
In addition to the advice that families can follow at home, there are several institutional campaigns that, from other areas, aim to bring children to the Mediterranean diet. The fight against obesity is also done from the institutional level and they are important campaigns that are often effective, especially when efforts are added and contribute to disseminate information on healthy lifestyles with the school, family, etc.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment has promoted for this year a campaign called "Mediterraneamos 2016", which promotes, among other activities, workshops to promote the Mediterranean Diet to instill in Spain the best eating habits and a balanced lifestyle.
Sports championships, youth workshops, school camps, food and sport conferences, recipe contests ... are other activities related to the promotion of the Mediterranean diet among the smallest that are carried out by the Ministry. In addition, on its website we find a special educational section for children, with games, animations on how to cook as a family ...
Little chefs of the Mediterranean diet with MedDiet Chef
And if what we want is for children to learn by having fun to be healthy chefs and to know the secrets of this diet, we have looked at an application developed by the Mediterranean Diet Foundation, which promotes the values of this diet, its products and the style of healthy life it represents.
The application is called MedDiet Chef and is designed for children, along with the help of families, to become true chefs of the Mediterranean Diet. It consists of three levels of difficulty: basic, medium and high, designed for the ages of six to eight (although once seen, I would also recommend it for younger children), from nine to ten and from 11 to 12 years.
By touching the icons we can discover the origin of the food, which we find in each season, how to preserve and cook them, how is the food pyramid, how to prepare a healthy menu, the importance of physical activities ... and at the end of the road, know How to be a great chef. The MedDiet application is free and can be downloaded from Google Play or the Apple Store.
Anyway, as we see There are many ways to bring the Mediterranean diet to children, the important thing is that as parents we are aware of the importance of a diet and a healthy lifestyle so that they grow healthy and become future transmitters of this important cultural heritage.
