Healthy Food For Healthy Kids: A Practical and Tasty Guide to Your Child's Nutrition [Paperback]

Bridget Swinney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1999

How to get your kids to eat right and enjoy it!

Hear is a guide preparing healthy meals your kids will love to eat. It tells you how to teach your children healthy eating habits and shares hints and recipes tfor happy mealtimes.

This practical book, written by a mom who is also a registered dietitian, offers advice on:

• Breastfeeding when going back to work;

• Shopping smart and setting up a healthy, kid-friendly kitchen;

• Developing healthy eating habits now that can prevent heart disease, cancer, and osteoporosis later;

• Managing food safety, food allergies, and vegetarian eating;

• Dealing with food jags and food battles;

• Sneakinbg veggies into your kids' meals in a way they'll love.

It also provides over 100 kid-tested recipes that include complete nutrition analyses.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The best part about this book: it's only $12 from Meadowbrook Press. It may be the best $12 you will ever spend. It's filled with helpful recipes and information. -- Springfield News-Sun, September 8, 1999

This guide informs parents about how to handle finicky eating, vegetarianism, food allergies, and other issues that complicate the interaction of children and food. Recipes that appeal to the taste buds of children make up the bulk of the book. -- Science News, October 9, 1999

To the rescue comes at least one new book - overflowing with fresh ideas, menus and recipes designed to appeal to children. In addition to practical information, Swinney sparks interest with names of recipes like "Madame Guede's Rice Pudding," "Pabble" and Ooey-Gooey Sandwiches." -- Bloomington Herald-Times, August 25, 1999

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Meadowbrook; 1 edition (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671317253
• ISBN-13: 978-0671317256
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,168,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommend for the cooking impaired!!, February 1, 2001

By 

Beth (Schertz, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Healthy Food For Healthy Kids: A Practical and Tasty Guide to Your Child's Nutrition (Paperback)

I bought this book because I don't like to cook but, gee, had to feed the kids. This book offered quick, very simple recipes that included ingredients I would have on hand. I also liked the variety of recipes that give me an opportunity to expose my kids to different foods disguised in more recognizable dishes (not just with pasta or in casseroles). Great for meal ideas, includes a lot of info on feeding suggestions--a good read. I wouldn't recommend for children under 1 year old since this is the pivotal age for many food allergies. 4 stars because this book tries to cover all bases by including info on breastfeeding and baby feeding, pages I would rather have seen spent on more great recipes. Includes monthly meal planner, handy meal quickies, and fat/cal/chol/vitamin/mineral breakdowns for each recipe.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!, November 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Healthy Food For Healthy Kids: A Practical and Tasty Guide to Your Child's Nutrition (Paperback)

I saw Bridget Swinney on NBC's Later Today and thought what she said made a lot of sense: "You have to give kids options to get them to eat right."

I realized that I hadn't given my children any options. Because all they would eat was hamburgers and frozen pizza, that was all I would cook. So I bought Bridget's book. WOW! My kids are eating a wide variety of foods. They may not love everything, but I'd say that out of the 12 dishes I've made, they've loved eight.

As a mother of two, I recommend this book for any parent who's worried about getting their kids to eat right.

42 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't let the title of this book fool you!!!!, December 8, 2004

By 

Kaitlin Fox (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Healthy Food For Healthy Kids: A Practical and Tasty Guide to Your Child's Nutrition (Paperback)

Don't let the title of this book fool you. Sure, it may include recipes with all of the four food groups, but take caution.....
they are not presented in the most wholesome and healthful ways. For example, whole grain breads piled with chocolate chips, lentil chilis flavoured with dry onion soup mix, desserts made with instant pudding mixes, soups made with canned soup (I still don't understand that concept - if you are going to make a homemade soup from scratch, why spoil it with canned soup?!) I could go on and on, but the underlying theme of this book is somewhat healthy food mixed with highly processed convenience foods. This may be good for some families, but I am choosing not to feed her food to my children. For families that are choosing not to feed meat to their children for various reasons (my 19 month old twins don't like the taste of meat and have chosen the vegetarian path on their own), this book offers no alternatives to the traditional "meat and potatoes" type meal. There is not one tofu recipe in this book at all. Plus, she only includes a handful of inadequate bean and lentil recipes. Boy, is she ever missing the big picture! Now is the time to develop good, healthy eating habits with our children (whether they are 2 or 12). We need to make every bite count nutritionally for our children, especially since the incidence of childhood obesity is on the rise. Snacks are just as important for your children as meals and they should be taken seriously. Bridget Swinney's suggestions for snack food are crunch munch mix(popcorn, pretzels, dressing mix) or dirt cake (instant pudding, whipped topping, cookie crumbs, gummy worms). Who would feed this to their kids on a regular basis? How about fresh fruit and vegetables or homemade muffins and loaves for snacks? Our families deserve the best and because of this, we should be feeding our children as well as ourselves more natural, wholesome foods. Don't assume that because they are natural and wholesome that these foods don't taste good. For a much more appropriate cookbook that addresses good nutrition with a major emphasis on good, wholesome, natural foods, try Shelly Null's "Healthy Cooking for Kids: Building Blocks for a Lifetime of Good Nutrition". Although, it is almost a completely vegan cookbook, her approach and her recipes will build a strong foundation for a lifetime of good nutrition and health. This book definately gets five stars. As for Bridget Swinney's book, the only reason that she got one star was because zero stars was not an option for rating this horrible cookbook. I am sending this book back to Amazon tomorrow with no regrets.