August 21, 2017
Back-to-School Busy Schedules Call for Simple Family Meals
READ TIME: 4 MIN.
The Nutrition Journal reports that Americans have shifted toward eating out more and cooking at home less. With busy work and back-to-school schedules, many parents find it difficult to find the time to make home-cooked meals.
Yet the American Journal of Preventative Medicine reports that the amount of time spent on food preparation and cooking may have implications for ones overall diet quality and health, and that a greater amount of time spent on home food preparation is associated with a higher diet quality. The good news is that parents who are juggling back-to-school hours and work can fit in healthy home-cooked meals that are quick to prepare, nutritious, and delicious.
"Parents love to be able to feed their kids good, nutritious foods. That's why we have created free tools and recipes to make cooking fast, easy and delicious," says Dr. Nimali Fernando, a Fredericksburg, Virginia-based pediatrician who founded The Doctor Yum Project. "Not only cooking at home better for a family's health, but it also saves them money, because eating at home is usually much more affordable than dining out."
While the benefits of eating home-cooked meals are well documented, many parents are still unsure how to make it fit into their busy schedule. Here are 5 back-to-school busy schedule tips to help get healthy meals on the table quickly:
"Work and school schedules can certainly make people feel pressed for time when it comes to getting meals on the dinner table," added Heidi DiEugenio, director of the Doctor Yum Project. "Yet, when you do you will feel better knowing that your family is eating healthier, and you will have likely saved some money. Start the school year off cooking at home and it will soon become a habit, getting easier as the year goes on."
Quick, healthy recipe from the Doctor Yum Project website:
Healthy Pesto
Prep time: 8 minutes
What you need:
2 cups basil (fresh, loosely packed)
� cup parmesan cheese (grated)
� cup broth (chicken or vegetable)
2 tablespoons walnuts (or pinenuts)
1 clove garlic (use two cloves for more intense taste)
2 tablespoon olive oil
� teaspoons salt
black pepper (to taste)
DIRECTIONS:
Pulse all ingredients in a food processor until everything is well-mixed. Serve over pasta or however you enjoy pesto! Works great on sandwiches, drizzled over grilled meats or veggies.
Dr. Fernando created The Doctor Yum Project, an organization with the mission of transforming the lives of families and communities by providing an understanding of the connection between food and overall health, as well as empowering them with the tools to live a healthy life. The project offers healthy cooking classes, child nutrition classes, cooking camps for kids, hands-on cooking instruction for families, first foods classes, a teaching garden, and online tools to help families make healthier meals. They also offer a preschool nutrition program, with 40 classrooms and almost 600 participating preschoolers.
Dr. Fernando, otherwise known as Dr. Yum, is a board-certified pediatrician. She is also the co-author of the book "Raising a Healthy, Happy Eater: A Parent's Handbook" (The Experiment, October 2015).
For more information, visit www.doctoryum.org