Is your cooking killing your kids?
YOU know the standard Sunday dinner everyone loves: you have your chicken, drenched in oil and fried to a crisp, on a plate with heaps of rice and peas. Yet, this is only your base. You cook a family-size portion of potato salad, complete with more mayonnaise than any recipe requires. You may even add an overflowing glass of soda if you’re feeling for a caffeine high. This is all for the best meal possible, of course. You’re simply introducing your kids to the traditions, the meals that you yourself were raised on – but at what cost?
I’m going to jump the gun and assume you’ve never reflected on your cooking methods and how they affect your children. Let’s pick the universally adored meal apart:
Fried chicken
A staple in the Jamaican household, fried foods are notoriously high in fat, calories, and more often than not, salt. These ingredients are linked to serious health problems like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and the list goes on. You yourself should know someone who suffers from at least one of these. Would you ever wish that on your own offspring? Now imagine routinely feeding a child fried chicken, loaded with these harmful ingredients, every Sunday since the child starts eating from the family pot. The build-up of oil and sugar in their bloodstream is more harmful than one can begin to imagine.
Rice and peas
In theory, because the rice is prepared with beans, it should actually be one of the healthier combination foods you can eat. But because it’s usually served with a combination of other starches, and cooked using butter and sometimes sugar, the Jamaican rice and peas meal isn’t actually for the health conscious.
Potato salad
Potatoes by themselves are just as nutritious as you’d expect a vegetable to be – a single tablespoon of mayonnaise, however, and you’re taking in an additional 94 calories. A four-person dish of potato salad will have you using around twelve tablespoons of mayonnaise. That’s 1,128 calories in a side dish alone.
Soda
It’s common knowledge that soda is bad for you. It brings no benefit to your body. The effects are even worse for a developing child. Soda builds fat deposits all over your body, weakening the liver and kidneys. A full cup of soda every Sunday for the rest of your life doesn’t sound healthy, especially for a growing child.
You might be thinking, how am I to stop preparing these foods when generations of Jamaicans have been preparing them this way? Sunday dinner is a tradition. It’s affordable, too – much more affordable, in fact, than the healthy alternatives. But given the national rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and so many other lifestyle diseases, you should try substituting these foods:
*Grilled chicken in the place of fried. You’ll be using the same chicken, while saving on oil. There’s nothing to lose.
*Mashed, baked, boiled and roasted potatoes are just as filling as their unhealthy counterpart. You won’t miss the excessive use of mayonnaise, and neither will your waistline.
*There are too many healthy and affordable drinks out there for you to let soda get the best of you and your family. Try fruit juice – soursop, mango, pineapple, and guava are just as easy to obtain as soda, and they’re much more rewarding. Water also boosts metabolism and promotes weight loss, so don’t skip it.
Start paying attention to your kids and what you’re putting into their bodies, because they won’t do it for you. Every parent wants an exceptional child, and unhealthy foods won’t motivate them or make your dreams for them come true. You don’t want to be responsible for stunting their brain development and growth, or to be the reason they are unhealthy, uninspired, and unhappy. Do better.
