Incorporating Spinach into Family Meals
Ways to Sneak the Healthy Benefits of Vegetables into Kids' Diets
Spinach is one of those foods that everyone knows they should eat, but just can't seem to find practical uses for in the kitchen. In families with picky young children, eating spinach becomes even more difficult. But there are many ways for families to use spinach in their everyday diets, often getting children to love spinach without even knowing it.
Health Benefits of Spinach
Spinach is a powerhouse food that is packed with nutritional value. All vegetables are good for you, but spinach in particular is nutrient-rich and is usually absent from the average family's diet. Spinach contains:
- high levels of bone-strengthening calcium
- vitamin A and C, folic acid, and magnesium which are known to fight and prevent cancer (especially colon, lung, and breast cancer)
- folate that lowers homocysteine in the blood, effectively protecting against heart disease
- flavonoids that protect against age-related memory loss
- lutein, which helps prevent cataracts and age-related macular degeneration
- the antioxidant beta-carotene, which fights cataracts, heart disease, and cancer
Substituting Spinach for Lettuce
Most varieties of lettuce, particularly iceberg lettuce, are mostly water and do not provide many nutritional benefits. In place of lettuce, it's a good idea to try using spinach. Spinach has a slightly chewier texture and is less crunchy than iceberg lettuce, but it is very similar - only with much more nutritional value. Spinach can be used in place of lettuce in sandwiches, BLTs, and salads.
How to Add Spinach to Favorite Meals
A great way to use spinach in the family kitchen is to finely chop it up and include it in meals that the family already enjoys. The taste of spinach is very hard to detect; it is usually the texture and deep green color of spinach that gives it away.
Finely blending the spinach in a food processor helps with the texture. In fact, chopping up a large quantity of spinach at a time and keeping a container in the fridge makes it easy to mix a spoonful into family meals.
Spinach can be successfully added to almost any food, including:
- casseroles
- pizza and spaghetti sauce
- meat loaf
- stew
- macaroni and cheese
- scrambled eggs
Disguising Spinach for Picky Kids
Many kids don't taste the spinach in their food but have issues with the color. If this is the case, try adding spinach to foods that already contain green ingredients like broccoli, parsley, green onions, or green peppers. Mixing spinach into darker foods like meat loaf, layering it in a casserole, or hiding it under pizza toppings may also help.
Parents could also try the opposite. Instead of trying to disguise the spinach, they could make a big deal out of eating green food. Kids might love the idea of eating "green eggs and ham" for breakfast, as long as their parents don't reveal the secret ingredient!
Popeye had it right when he carried around cans of spinach for an extra boost of energy when he needed it most. Spinach is an amazingly nutritious food, and parents concerned about adding essential nutrients to their child's diet should get creative with all the possibilities for using spinach in the kitchen.
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