|
|
| Back to the Table of Contents |
Pasta--Its Challenge
in Childhood Nutrition
|
What I Choose to Buy at the
Co-op ... and Why
A series of monthly articles by members of our Nutrition &
Education committee |
by Louise Frazier
|
When studying nutrition in
Europe, I was startled by the statement "pasta and pudding" (British
English for American "dessert") "make school children weak."
Challenging as it may sound in the light of today's favorite foods, the
concern was that the food children eat should strengthen them through
the digestive process. Eating refined foods, which have already
undergone a breaking down process in the machinery of the miller and
refinery, compromises the role of the metabolism, which needs to come
to grips with whole foods.
Comfort instead of vitality is the result, often contributing to the
"couch potato" mood prevalent today. Many youngsters appearing listless
and lazy simply may not have the energy from their daily food to become
more active. In addition, their appetites increase as they seek
satisfaction in the vicious cycle of misdirected metabolic secretions
that only serve to raise hunger in the process of dealing with refined
food. Adding to this, the lack of necessary physical exercise, fresh
air and sunshine lead to a perfect recipe for obesity!
To bring wholesomeness, less refinement and more liveliness into daily
fare, begin by replacing common white flour pastas with those made from
whole-grains found in boxes on the Coop's grocery section shelves or
the more economical loose bins of the bulk aisles. Choose whole wheat,
spelt, brown rice or buckwheat pastas and macaroni products to make
your popular pasta dishes. Better yet, add a measure of whole grains in
the cooking, along with fresh organic vegetables and dried or fresh
herbs to maximize flavor while adding valuable nutrients.
Consider a dish of equal amounts of whole spelt elbow macaroni cooked
with whole buckwheat groats or kasha. Once when I served this to family
guests at dinner, the father said to me how much he enjoyed the
"chewiness" of eating it. Rice-Aroni made from white rice and pasta in
sauce used to be known as a "San Francisco treat." Why not brown
rice-aroni or whole spelt-aroni? Simply adding some cooked whole grains
to whole grain macaroni elbows in preparing a favorite dish like
macaroni and cheese can markedly improve vitality. Sometimes I cook
extra buckwheat one evening to serve with braised beets, greens, or red
cabbage, then reserve some of the grains to add to a simmering pot of
pasta, onions and broccoli, topping with Old Chatham Sheepherders
Yogurt or cubes of tofu with tamari for a quick meal later in the week.
Lasagna can be made by simply layering uncooked whole grain noodles
with the fillings in an oiled baking dish/pan and baked with extra
broth or fluid to cover half way up the layers. Quark, ricotta cheese
or mashed tofu with herbs (basil, thyme) can be spread on the uncooked
lasagna noodles before layering with chopped fresh spinach or other
leafy greens sprinkled with thyme or marjoram. If using onions,
cauliflower, broccoli or carrots, lightly sauté or blanch before
layering. One also could layer wheat germ or whole grain flakes—like
oats—between the layers or on top for crunch.
Other spaghetti dishes can be made with whole grains too, increasing
their nutrient value.
Some cooks make spaghetti sauce without tomatoes, combining carrots,
beets and onions cooked with sage and basil to produce a superb
red-orange sauce. My Italian sisters-in-law always cooked vegetables in
their "gravy"— as they called the spaghetti sauce they made every
Sunday. If meat was on the menu, it too was cooked with the hearty
vegetables, onions and herbs, while the more delicate ones, like
broccoli or caulifl ower, were added later. A coleslaw, carrot-raisin,
red beet-apple, Waldorf or tossed salad complemented the meal. Since we
are creatures of habit, it may take a little extra effort on the part
of the cook, not only to make the recipe most flavorsome, but also in
meeting resistance from partakers with humor and encouragement. With
younger children a little fantasy goes a long way too, and giving a
dish a fanciful name can perk them up to eat with gusto.
In the dining hall of the Visiting Students Program (VSP) at Hawthorne
Valley Farm, we used fantasy as we put the menu on the board for the
many thirdgraders who spent a week with us each year. We listed them as
millet-carrot soup Cinderella, Rapunzel's gold-grated carrot-apple
slaw, Star apples (cut in half crosswise and baked in berry juice) or
Can't Be Beet carob cupcakes, made with left-over cooked red beets.
Once when telling the young diners after lunch how the natural sugar in
beets was good for the brain and could help them be smarter, one boy
said "Louise, why didn't you tell me before, so I could have eaten a
lot of them?"
|
Puddings
|
Desserts
too can be made with whole grains, cooking them with sweet tasting
fruits and fruit juice—try millet, corn meal or buckwheat for a quick,
delicious pudding. An oat flake fruit crisp sweetened with maple syrup
is wholesome too. Even cookies and cakes can be made with whole grain
flours and juice or maple syrup. Well-known chefs are discovering that
whole spelt flour makes fine baked goods. In the VSP dining hall
recipes, we used only whole spelt flour, sometimes combined with whole
oat flour or flakes, so even children with wheat allergies could eat
them—and we never used white sugar at all!
Let us go forward endowing our children with long, healthy lives,
instead of limiting their years with listlessness and obesity!
|
| Back to the Table of Contents |
|
|
|
