In the United States, obesity and being overweight has risen at an epidemic rate during the past 20 years. The prevalence of being overweight has more than doubled among children and has tripled among adolescents since 1980, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Too many children are not getting the kind of nutrition that they need and are learning bad food habits that will haunt them for a lifetime.

The made-for-TV answer of the new television show is to force radical changes down their throats by replacing bags of junk food with tofu and squid overnight.

But what about another approach --one that involves planting a garden or visiting a farm stand to pick out vegetables for dinner, or one that allows children to grind the grain themselves and knead the dough to make bread?

Cookbook author Lisa Hildreth, a kindergarten teacher at the Susquehanna Waldorf School in Marietta, says re-establishing a connection with food, allowing children to see the processes that bring food to the table, is a way to modify their eating patterns positively. She advocates not only eating whole foods, but also an awareness of how food is processed.

"It is much harder for the children of today to make connections with the natural world," she said. "We can try our best to let the child experience as much of the food growing, preparation, and cooking process as possible."

Integrating food preparation into a kindergarten classroom setting is an important part of the Waldorf curriculum.

"In a Waldorf kindergarten, everything about the classroom is about creating a warm and loving environment," said Hildreth. "Working together with children to make food and offering warm food is part of this."

Which means, each week the children help prepare their own healthy snacks. They grind grain and they then measure, mix, and knead it into bread, or they chop vegetables they brought from home to add to a community soup pot.

Hildreth feels it's a connection to food that has been eroding in our culture.

Initiatives, such as the international Slow Food Movement, the parallel Local Food Movement, and the rise in community-supported agriculture, hope to change that.

"Think of a grocery store and how all the food is in bags. Small children think that vegetables just sprout on those shelves. They don't understand that you need soil and sunlight," said Hildreth. "Growing food in a garden that you can plant and weed and gather yourself changes your relationship. You have a whole relationship with food when you make it yourself, when you participate in the process."

Introducing these ideas at an early age, instead of retroactively trying to repair the damage as an adult, can help establish healthy habits for a lifetime, she said.

"When the children experience the process, they have ownership. If you worked on it yourself, it's easier to eat foods that you might not try otherwise," said Hildreth. "We're not opening a jar of applesauce, we're allowing the children to see what it's like to go to the orchard and pick apples, how it feels to chop apples and get sticky, what they smell like when they are cooking, how they look when they come out of the pot --all something that was a normal thing years ago."

Before you say you don't have time to plant a garden or visit a farm or even wait for bread dough to rise, stop and think what message this sends to children, what food habits you are establishing.

"When you involve children in the process, you may find out that they love to chop vegetables or like to help cook," said Hildreth. "They can be an amazing help. I've seen 3-year-olds who just love to peel carrots."

(Hildreth's secret to allowing very young children to help in the chopping process: Cut vegetables into long, thin slices so that children can cut them into smaller pieces with butter knives. "That way I don't feel worried about fingers being sliced.")

Hildreth says a favorite process in the classroom is for children to grind whole grains in an old coffee mill. Once ground, the children measure and mix it into breads and muffins.

"Often parents are surprised that something they thought children would not be interested in, some new grain like millet or buckwheat, they find out that their child loves it," said Hildreth. "It leads the parent down a new road."

Over the summer, Hildreth says children familiar with "Monday Muffin Day" or "Thursday Stone Soup Day," ask their parents to continue preparing the snacks at home.

It's a subtle nudge to help the whole family make better choices.

Hildreth originally wrote her cookbook, "The Waldorf Kindergarten Snack Book," as a resource for teachers, gathering recipes from other Waldorf kindergartens around the country.

"I only collected things that teachers had used in the classroom and found that they worked well for them," she said.

But she is discovering a whole new market for the book -- parents who are interested in fixing problems, or avoiding them all together.

"I am not a nutritionist. I do not have a medical degree. This is just practical experience, based on real-life teachers in the classroom," said Hildreth.

Author Lisa Hildreth will have a book-signing for her new cookbook at the Susquehanna Waldorf School's annual Spring Fair celebration Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event will also feature vegetarian and non-vegetarian fare, a cooking contest and recipe exchange, a children's puppet play, children's and adult raffles, and other entertainment throughout the day. Admission is free. The school is at 15 W. Walnut St., Marietta. For more info, visit online at www.susquehannawaldorf.org. blog comments powered by Disqus