I am fairly certain that most of us have either seen or at the very least heard of the hit situation comedy “Married with Children” that dominated television for quite a few years and is still shown in syndication in many markets around the world. There are some wonderful insights that are shown by this often dysfunctional family and a few pearls to bring into your everyday lives. The same can be said when it comes to cooking with children.
There is little on this earth that can teach you about yourself and the way your children view you as easily as cooking with your children. Of course, this is the perfect opportunity for many of us to let our hair down a little, relax, and have fun in the kitchen. Unfortunately, if you are anything like me, this is a difficult process, to say the least. I am a bit of a control freak in my kitchen. It is my domain or sovereign territory so to speak. For this reason, it is difficult to give up that little bit of control and hand over the reins to any one of my children.
On the other hand, I know they are learning important skills that they honestly need to know in life. This knowledge of course doesn’t make it any less difficult when I’m scraping tomato sauce out of places I would never have thought to discover it on my own. If you are considering cooking with children you need to make sure you have the proper ingredients on hand before beginning. You certainly do not want to be caught without that cup full of patience you will be requiring nor do you wish to need to leave in the middle of things for a run to the local grocery store to pick up the missing ingredients.
Another great rule of thumb when it comes to cooking with children is the KISS rule. Keep it simple silly. This rule will help out more than you ever realize. First of all, most children have relatively short attention spans. While they want to learn and help mommy out, they also do not want to have enough time to get bored with the details. Use simple recipes when cooking with children and your chances for success will be much greater than with overly complicated or ingredient intense recipes.
As if this wasn’t enough to absorb another very important rule when it comes to cooking with children is to clean as you go whenever possible. Trust me on this. While there is part of you who will want to put off the task of cleaning the messes that are made until later or wait till the end and only clean once, this allows the opportunity for messes to layer and compound themselves. Constantly clean throughout the process for the best possible results. You should enlist your children in the cleaning process as well. While it may be easier to do yourself, it is far more important to teach them the basics of cleaning as you go. Remember one day they will more than likely invade your kitchen while you’re not looking.
Cooking with children can be an incredible way to have a fun day if you are able to let go of the control that you too often hold over the kitchen. Give over the keys to your kingdom for a day of fun and frolicking among the flour and sugar and see just how many wonderful memories you can make with your little ones along the way.
This includes table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup, both of which are about half glucose, half fructose.
One reason that excessive added sugar intake is harmful is the negative metabolic effects of fructose when consumed in large amounts.
Many people now believe that because added sugars are bad, the same must apply to fruits, which also contain fructose.
However, this is a misconception. Fructose is only harmful in large amounts, and it’s difficult to get excessive amounts of fructose from fruit.
SUMMARY
Evidence suggests that fructose can cause harm when consumed in excess. However, there is not enough fructose in fruit to cause concern.
Fruit Also Contains Fiber, Water and Significant Chewing Resistance
Eating whole fruit, it is almost impossible to consume enough fructose to cause harm.
Fruits are loaded with fiber, water and have significant chewing resistance.
For this reason, most fruits (like apples) take a while to eat and digest, meaning that the fructose hits the liver slowly.
Plus, fruit is incredibly filling. Most people will feel satisfied after eating one large apple, which contains 23 grams of sugar, 13 of which are fructose (4).
Compare that to a 16-ounce bottle of Coke, which contains 52 grams of sugar, 30 of which are fructose, and has no nutritional value (5).
A single apple would make you feel quite full and less inclined to eat more food. Conversely, a bottle of soda has remarkably poor satiety and people don’t compensate for the sugar by eating less food (6Trusted Source).
When fructose hits your liver fast and in large amounts, as is the case when you drink soda, it can have adverse health effects over time.
However, when it hits your liver slowly and in small amounts, as is the case when you eat an apple, your body is well adapted to easily metabolize the fructose.
While eating large amounts of added sugar is harmful to most people, the same does not apply to fruit.
SUMMARY
Whole fruits take time to chew and digest. Because of this, you feel fuller and your body can easily tolerate the small amounts of fructose.
Fruits Contain Lots of Fiber, Vitamins, Minerals and Antioxidants
Of course, fruits are more than just watery bags of fructose.
There are lots of nutrients in them that are important for health. This includes fiber, vitamins and minerals, as well as a plethora of antioxidants and other plant compounds.
Fiber, especially soluble fiber, has many benefits, including reduced cholesterol levels, slowed absorption of carbs and increased satiety. Plus, studies have shown that soluble fiber can help you lose weight (7Trusted Source, 8Trusted Source, 9, 10Trusted Source).
What’s more, fruits tend to be high in several vitamins and minerals that many people don’t get enough of, including vitamin C, potassium and folate.
Of course, “fruit” is an entire food group. There are thousands of different edible fruits found in nature, and their nutrient compositions can vary greatly.
So, if you want to maximize fruits’ health effects, focus on ones that are rich in nutrients. Try fruits with more skin.
The skin of fruits is usually very rich in antioxidants and fiber. This is the reason that berries, which have greater amounts of skin, gram for gram, are often considered healthier than larger fruits.
It is also a good idea to switch things up and eat a variety of fruits because different fruits contain different nutrients.
SUMMARY
Fruits contain large amounts of important nutrients, including fiber, vitamins, minerals and various antioxidants and plant compounds.
Most Studies Show Health Benefits
Multiple observational studies have shown that people who eat more fruits and vegetables have a lower risk of various diseases.
Many of the studies pool together fruits and vegetables, while some only look at fruits.
One review of nine studies found that each daily portion of fruit consumed reduced the risk of heart disease by 7% (11Trusted Source).
Also, a study including 9,665 US adults found that a high fruit and vegetable intake was associated with a 46% lower risk of diabetes in women, but there was no difference in men (12).
Furthermore, one study that looked at fruits and vegetables separately found that vegetables were associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer, but this didn’t apply to fruit (13).
Many other studies have shown that eating fruits and vegetables is associated with a lower risk of heart attack and stroke — the two leading causes of death in Western countries (14Trusted Source, 15Trusted Source).
One study looked at how different types of fruit affect the risk of type 2 diabetes. Those who consumed the most grapes, apples and blueberries had the lowest risk, with blueberries having the strongest effect (16Trusted Source).
However, one problem with observational studies is that they cannot prove that the associations they detect are direct causal relationships.
People who eat the most fruit tend to be more health conscious, less likely to smoke and more likely to exercise.
That said, a few randomized controlled trials (real human experiments) have shown that increased fruit intake can lower blood pressure, reduce oxidative stress and improve glycemic control in diabetics (17, 18Trusted Source).
Overall, it seems clear from the data that fruits have significant health benefits.
SUMMARY
Plenty of evidence shows that a high fruit intake is associated with a lower risk of serious diseases like heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
Eating Fruit Can Help You Lose Weight
It’s often forgotten that fruits are incredibly filling.
Because of their fiber and water contents and the extensive chewing involved in eating them, fruits are very satiating.
The satiety index is a measure of how much different foods contribute to feelings of fullness.
Fruits like apples and oranges are among the highest scoring foods tested, even more filling than beef and eggs (19Trusted Source).
This means that if you increase your intake of apples or oranges, you will likely feel so full that you will automatically eat less of other foods.
There is also one interesting study that demonstrates how fruits can contribute to weight loss (20Trusted Source).
In this six-month study, nine men ate a diet consisting only of fruits (82% of calories) and nuts (18% of calories).
Not surprisingly, these men lost significant amounts of weight. Those who were overweight lost even more than those who were at a healthy weight.
Overall, given the strong effects that fruits can have on satiety, it seems beneficial to replace other foods, especially junk foods, with fruit to help you lose weight over the long term.
SUMMARY
Fruits like apples and oranges are among the most filling foods you can eat. Eating more of them should lead to an automatic reduction in calorie intake and ultimately, weight loss.
When to Avoid Fruit
Even though fruit is healthy for most people, there are some reasons why others may need to avoid it.
One is intolerance. For example, eating fruit can cause digestive symptoms in people with and intolerance to FODMAPs.
The other reason is being on a very low-carb or ketogenic diet. The main goal of these diets is to reduce carb intake sufficiently for the brain to start using mostly ketone bodies for fuel instead of glucose.
For this to happen, it’s necessary to restrict carbs to under 50 grams per day, sometimes all the way down to 20–30 grams.
Given that just a single piece of fruit can contain more than 20 grams of carbs, it’s obvious that fruits are inappropriate for such a diet. Even just one piece of fruit per day could easily knock you out of ketosis.
SUMMARY
The main reasons to avoid fruit include a relevant intolerance or being on a very low-carb or ketogenic diet.
Fruit Juices and Dried Fruits Should Be Limited
Even though whole fruits are very healthy for most people, avoid binging on fruit juice or dried fruit.
Many of the fruit juices on the market aren’t even “real” fruit juices. They consist of water mixed with some sort of concentrate and a whole bunch of added sugar.
But even if you get 100% real fruit juice, keep your intake moderate.
There is a lot of sugar in fruit juice, about as much as a sugar-sweetened beverage.
However, there is no fiber and chewing resistance to slow down consumption, making it very easy to take in a large amount of sugar in a short period of time.
Similarly, dried fruits are very high in sugar, and it’s easy to eat large amounts of them.
Smoothies are somewhere in the middle. If you put the whole fruit in the blender, it’s much better than drinking fruit juice. Still, eating the whole fruit is best.
SUMMARY
Although eating whole fruits is very healthy, the same isn’t necessarily true for fruit juice and dried fruit. Both are high in sugar and easy to overeat.
The Bottom Line
Fruit is healthy for most people.
While excessive sugar intake can be harmful, this doesn’t apply to whole fruits. Rather, they are “real” food, high in nutrients and satisfyingly filling.
If you can tolerate fruit and you’re not on a low-carb or ketogenic diet, by all means, eat fruit.
If you are the owner, operator or manager of a restaurant or other type of establishment at which food is sold, you will regularly find yourself in the market for different products to stock your commercial kitchen. Chances are that you find yourself very frequently searching for cookware products for your commercial kitchen.
There are a number of different avenues available to you through which you can shop for cookware items and products for your commercial kitchen. One …
If you are the owner, operator or manager of a restaurant or other type of establishment at which food is sold, you will regularly find yourself in the market for different products to stock your commercial kitchen. Chances are that you find yourself very frequently searching for cookware products for your commercial kitchen.
There are a number of different avenues available to you through which you can shop for cookware items and products for your commercial kitchen. One avenue that you might want to pursue when it comes to looking for cookware items for your commercial kitchen is the Internet and world wide web.
In this day and age there are now a number of different websites that cater specifically to people who are involved in the running of a commercial kitchen. Oftentimes these websites can assist the owner, operator or manager of a restaurant to obtain what might otherwise be hard to find.
In addition to being able to locate hard to find cookware products, some of these specialty websites also are able to provide those involved in the running of a commercial kitchen with advice and suggestions about what types of products will be helpful to the running of a successful commercial kitchen. Many of these sites have people on their staffs that can provide direct suggestions on what types of products, what types of cookware items, that you should purchase and obtain for your own commercial food operation. In addition, some of these sites also sponsor and maintain open forums through which fellow commercial kitchen — restaurant — owners, operators and managers can come together to swap ideas and share opinions about what works best in a commercial kitchen operation.
If you are running a commercial kitchen, you will also want to stop by one or another of the overstock sites that are in operation on the Net. At times, even commercial kitchen owners, operators and managers can find products — including cookware — that can be very useful in a restaurant or similar setting.
Finally, when looking for cookware online for a commercial kitchen, be sure to stop by one or another of the auction sites that are in operation on the Net today. Through these sites, the owner, operator or manager of a commercial kitchen generally can find a solid deal on a wide array of different types of cookware products that are invaluable in the proper and successful operation of a commercial kitchen in this day and age.
