Family & Youth

Cooking With Kids

Healthy eating habits and a love of cooking begin at home. Parents who promote their children’s interest in good foods and cooking help them live a long, healthy life. There are other benefits as well, for both children and parents. A new brochure titled Homemade for Health – Cooking with Kids from the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) guides parents on what to do.

A Picky Eater May Learn to Like More Foods

As a parent, don’t allow picky and junk food eaters to discourage you. Children at a young age are often curious and willing to try new things. Letting children help out in the kitchen inspires them with a greater appreciation for a wide range of foods.

By assisting in meal preparation that involves new or disliked vegetables and other foods, children may be more willing to eat and enjoy them. If a child still develops an aversion for a certain new food or vegetable they will have at least been part of the process and not say, “Mom or Dad made me eat it.”

Cooking together nurtures parent-child relationships, too. Since families usually eat breakfast in a rush and lunch in different locations, dinnertime is generally the one time of day when parents and children can eat together. Cooking dinner together is a great time for parents to talk with their children about what makes a healthful meal and develop a closer bond.

Teaching your children to cook will also give them a sense of accomplishment and enhance basic skills they will need for school, like attention to detail, accuracy and organization.

Tips for Cooking with Kids
Show children the importance of organizing. Get them involved in preparation tasks like measuring ingredients, or laying out the utensils.

• Involve them in the process of deciding which steps of meal preparation should be done ahead, like checking to see if all ingredients are on hand.
• Depending on age or skills, children may not be ready to use a knife or stovetop. Suggest other work they can do, like washing produce. Save their pride by telling them working together saves time.
• Tell your child where different foods come from, how they’re grown and what their health properties are. With vegetables, the color is often a “secret code” to how they protect our health.
  Here are a few examples:
  • Dark, leafy greens, like romaine lettuce, spinach and collards, contain lutein, a natural substance that keeps your eyes healthy.
  • Citrus fruits, melons and berries are rich in vitamin C, which helps prevent many illnesses and heal wounds.
  • Carrots are known for beta-carotene, but many dark green and yellow vegetables and fruits have it as well. The body converts this substance into vitamin A for protecting your immune system.

For more helpful tips and some fun recipes for children, call AICR at 1-800-843-8114, ext. 111, and ask for your free copy of the new brochure, Homemade for Health – Cooking with Kids.

Source: American Institute for Cancer Research, Ever Green, Ever Healthy, November 2004

Try These Recipes!

Tighten-Up and Ventilate your Home To Avoid Moisture and Mold Problems

Short of cataclysmic events such as fire, earthquake and severe storms, nothing will shorten the life of a building more than water infiltration and moisture problems. Moreover, excess moisture in a building also creates ideal environmental conditions for mold growth. Mold and mold by-products can have severe negative effects on indoor air quality that can pose health risks to building occupants.

Figure 1: Illustration of typical building envelope - The ceiling, walls and floors between heated and unheated spaces form the building envelope of your home.

Building science experts suggest the following strategies for avoiding moisture-related problems in houses.

• Tighten up the building envelope (See Figure 1)
• Control moisture sources within the house
• Provide adequate ventilation to remove spot sources of moisture
  

Tightening up the building envelope may mean fixing problems related to poor construction practice. For example, if water is getting into the walls because the house was initially sided without placing some type of drainage membrane underneath the siding, then that problem must be corrected.

Another important step toward tightening up the building envelope is to make certain your house is properly insulated and air sealed to keep cold air from infiltrating into the heated portion of the house during the winter. Imagine the scenario where the air temperature within a house is 70° and relative humidity (R.H.) is a modest 35%. If the outdoor temperature is below 20°, and it often is in New York, then the surface temperature on the interior side of a poorly sealed exterior wall could easily be below the dew-point temperature of 53°. If so, condensation will form on that surface, creating environmental conditions conducive to mold growth.

Occupant sources of moisture, called "use loads" also must be controlled. Use loads are related to the activities of people living in and using the building. Household activities such as cooking, clothes washing, and bathing create moisture in the form of water vapor. Allowing water vapor to build up within the house will create ideal conditions for mold growth. Other examples of occupant-related behaviors that create significant sources of moisture within a house are:

• Use of non-vented combustion appliances such as kerosene heaters. These small space heaters generate almost a gallon of water per gallon of kerosene burned.
• Storing large amounts of unseasoned firewood inside generates tremendous amounts of water vapor. One cord (a cord is a pile of wood stacked 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long) of unseasoned firewood will emit between 50 and 100 gallons of water over a 6-month period.

Use loads are corrected by controlling moisture sources and providing adequate ventilation to remove spot sources of moisture.

Good home maintenance practices will also help avoid many common causes of moisture problems. For example, routine inspections of drain and supply pipes under sinks and other plumbing fixtures will reveal water leaks so they can be fixed before causing major problems. Maintaining roof gutters and down spouts is also important in preventing rainwater from seeping into basements and crawl spaces.

Up until just a few years ago finding a trained, properly equipped, Building Analyst in New York State was difficult. Now thanks to the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® program, one of many New York Energy $martSM programs sponsored by the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA), that situation has changed. Through this program you can have a participating Building Performance Institute-certified contractor come to your home, and for a fully deductible assessment fee, perform a comprehensive assessment of your home.

Figure 2: A blower door consists of an adjustable panel and a powerful fan. The panel is fitted into the exterior door opening of the house. The fan pulls air out of the house and special equipment is used to measure the air pressure difference between indoors and outdoors. The tightness or leakiness of the house is determined by the air pressure differences.

While the primary focus of the assessment is to improve the energy efficiency of your home, energy efficiency and moisture control issues are closely linked. For example, the assessment includes a blower door test (see - Figure 2) to determine the extent and location of excess air infiltration, which causes moisture problems and decreases energy efficiency.

The assessment will determine if your house has adequate ventilation rates in high moisture areas such as kitchens and baths. The contractor will also do a full health and safety inspection of your home's combustion appliances. After the completion of the analysis, you will receive a report that lists improvements that will reduce the chance of moisture-related problems in your house and energy efficiency improvements that will save you money. The report will also list the cost of making the improvement and an estimate of how much money you can expect to save annually. If you have any of the suggested work done, the fee for the assessment is deducted from the cost of the work. In addition, the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® program offers a number of financing options to help you pay for the improvements.

To get additional information on the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® program, and find a participating BPI-certified contractor in your area, call 1-877-NY-SMART or visit www.GetEnergySmart.org. If you would like to learn more about preventing home moisture problems, contact Cornell Cooperative Extension - Wyoming County at (585) 786-2251.