Getting kids to eat more veggies can be a struggle but parents provide the environment in which eating behaviours are set. Parents are often searching on how-to-get-kids-to-eat-more-veggies but there’s one parent in particular who is on a journey to ensure that she and her husband are the best role models they can be to their son.
Emma and her husband have an 8 year old son, Caleb who has struggled with vegetables. “Dinner times were hard work with my son. As a family we are generally fussy eaters but my son was just so unwilling to try anything new and would eat only a very limited selection of food, none of which were particularly healthy” Emma said. “I could see that his diet was starting to affect his lifestyle and in particular his weight and I decided it was time to finally put a plan into action to give him a better life,” she also said.
So, Emma wrote in to Abby Coleman, HIT105 FM asking for advice to help Caleb.
Listen to Emma’s story on the radio below.
The Hit105 team put Emma and her son in touch with Dr Phillip Wuth, from The Doctor’s Kitchen Australia to help her gain a greater understanding of how to incorporate more veggies into foods by using the Doc’s Family Dinners.
Our Doctors approach to managing this issue starts at home. “If we can get kids to fall in love with healthy food then they’re more likely to stick with these healthy eating patterns later in life”, Dr Wuth stated. The great thing about the Doc’s Family Dinners is that it “helps teach kids the types of ingredients that can make vegetable packed meals delicious and separately, allows the parents to be the best role model they can. Eating healthy meals together as a family plays an important role in establishing healthy eating habits in parents, adolescents and children”, stated Dr Wuth.
For this reason, The Doctor’s Kitchen Australia were on a mission to help Emma and her son by offering them 4 weeks of the Doc’s Family Dinners. These dinners are loaded with at least 3-4 serves of vegetables per dinner and packed with wholefood ingredients. As part of this, Dr Wuth also offered to follow up Emma and her son at our HQ at Carina and arrange some advice from our exercise experts from Out of the Box Physiotherapy.
So, for 5 nights a week for 4 weeks The Doctor’s Kitchen Australia provided Emma and her family with Doc’s Family Dinners. It was hoped that on the other 2 nights that they, as a family, can start putting into practice by cooking and preparing meals using some of the ingredients that we’ve used in the Doc’s Family Dinners.
Since receiving the Doc’s Family Dinners Emma said that it has helped change her life as “the pressure was taken off myself to try and come up with new ideas for meals and my weekends were freed up as I didn’t have to spend hours on a Sunday meal prepping for the week ahead”.
The other half of the health equation is regular movement. Since meeting with our exercise experts from Out of the Box Physiotherapy, Caleb has been more active in his everyday activities. “We are more mindful of getting outdoors and burning off some energy every day”, Emma said.
Caleb with Jaime, one of the team from The Doctor’s Kitchen Australia
Emma believes that the most enjoyable part of trying The Doctor’s Kitchen “was a good variety and that I stepped out of my comfort zone as well and tried new foods.”
Their favourite Doc family dinner were the Doc’s Lamb shank, Sweet Potato Mash & Roast Beetroot.
After sampling the Doc’s family dinners for a month and seeing, eating and living the positive nutritional outcome for her and her family Emma stated that she’ll continue to use the Doctor’s Kitchen on a bi-weekly basis. She said, “whilst I love the freedom of not having to cook all the time, I think it is important that I learn from the foods that we are getting and start making them myself and learn to incorporate them in our everyday life.”
The Doc’s approach to childhood obesity starts at home. If we can get kids to fall in love with healthy food, then they are more likely to stick with these healthy eating patterns later in life. Teach your kids how to cook and prepare meals, and be the best role model you can.
The Doctor’s Kitchen offers a complete vegan, pescatarian, vegetarian, gluten free, dairy free or healthy balance menu serving 4 people, 5 nights a week for just $6.50 per person. Take a look at the Doc’s purely delicious + full of goodness range of Family Dinners by visiting our website or email info@thedoctorskitchen.com.au for more information.
The Doctor’s Kitchen and our doctors service all Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, and Toowoomba areas.
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